| We know that the painter Pierre Girieud, from Riez, has just finished decorating the great hall of honor at the University of Poitiers. His paintings, exhibited for a few days at the Musée de l'Orangerie, took the road to their final location. We are currently hiding them. They will soon be inaugurated during celebrations intended to commemorate the formation of this study center.
Deeply imbued with a classic spirit, Pierre Girieud is part of the small group of artists who want a direct feeling to juxtapose, in a painting, the allegorical and mythological evocation, that painting does not abandon the domain of art. story, which it tells at the same time as it moves. By his ideas, by his previous work, he was very suitable for the work entrusted to him, during his too short passage rue de Valois, Mr. André François-Poncet.
The rectangular main hall of the University of Poitiers is lit on one side by windows, between which the artist painted, in monochrome, nudes of ample and serene gravity symbolizing the Educational Virtues . When we enter, we have these figures on the left, while the wall at the bottom shows, on both sides of a monument to the dead, La France Douloureuse, consoling widows and orphans and la France victorieuse, to which two women offer lyre and laurels. In front of the windows, four large compositions separated by pilasters, are each devoted to one of the faculties. Law is symbolized by Lycurgus and the Spartan oath, the ceremony of which is performed in front of three characters at various stages of life: childhood, virility and old age, while the crowd watches, massed at the bottom of a hemicycle.
The Letters evoke Homer among the shepherds: in a bluish landscape, rough country listen to the Aëde holding his lyre, seated near a young woman.
Medicine is Aesculapius at Epidaurus, alongside Hygiene, on a base from which water escapes to fill a basin towards which patients of all kinds flock to the search for health. Then, it is the Sciences, which personifies Pythagoras and his school, arranged near a globe which they study, while three teenagers, playing dice, recall the part of chance in human discoveries.
On these different themes, Mr. Girieud, without however seeking archaeological and documentary precision, remained faithful to the classic ideal. The landscape he evoked, with its elegantly curved hills and its blue sky, with its trees where the olive tree appears, with its transparent atmosphere, is completely inspired by our Provence and the sites for which the artist proclaims. , at all his salons, his unchanging attachment.
Finally, the largest composition occupies an entire panel where the door opens. Above this door, the University, seated, draped and crowned, leans on two ephebes lying beside it. On the right and on the left, the main monuments of Poitiers and the region are grouped, while in the foreground, in two groups, the characters who relate to local history: Grégoire de Tour, Fortunat, Ste-Radegonde, Charles VII, the Duke of Berry, Ronsard, Rabelais, Descartes, Bacon, etc., are united.
This set, which summarizes in a way the history, the goal, the means and the results of the University, is clear and concise, in its balance. Painting is vigorous and a fine craft. The whole thing does honor to the artist. There are almost two years of work there, and the resources of the Fine Arts management are so modest that this set of high artistic probity brings less to its author than the least of the dioramas that abound at the Colonial Exhibition. |