| Let's go to Mme Druet, where Pierre Girieud shows a series of Hellenic landscapes. Girieud lived four months on sacred ground; he deeply felt its nobility; his paintings of the fountain of Castalie, Epidaure, Délos, reflect and communicate his emotion. It is the stay of a Pierre Girieud (....) at the Acropolis, in front of the Parthenon or the Errechtéion, like Italian voyages of Denis or Laprade; by that mean that these artists accomplished this pilgrimage when their spirit, nourished by culture, was able to receive the beneficial influence of the ancient atmosphere. A teenager who goes to the Villa Medici or to Athens, endowed with the viaticum given to him by academic professors, understands nothing about the great plastic texts; and he risks sinking into the flatness or the lie of the pastiche. Pierre Girieud, traveling from Greece to the age when he reached his master's degree, where he is in full possession of his technical means, can only benefit greatly from the lesson. Several of its landscapes, of a subdued light, of a harmonious cadence, are of perfect age. Near these Greek sites, you will also see several beautiful sketches of the new decorations that Girieud performs for the University of Poitiers, and also for Jas de Puyvert. This modest, honest and wise Pierre Girieud is one of the fine figures of contemporary art. (...) |