Towards the end of the 19th century in Marseille, Adolphe Monticelli became the emblem of the young generation of Provencal artists seduced by the games of light bursting like sparkling fireworks in the Master’s park sights. Louis Mathieu Verdilhan, learned from the Impressionists, during his two stays in Paris, to see all in blue. He lost his left eye due to a sudden spurt of indigo blue. Then, Louis Mathieu Verdilhan perceived space differently. The perspective became flat and then required more color. The "Fauves”, who triumphed in 1905, gave him a new inspiration. He owes to the Fauves his increase use of colors, where ochre dominate in the pictures made in Roquevaire and Allauch.  
Louis Mathieu Verdilhan, taken in the creative run up that characterizes the European artists of the immediate pre-WWI period, made the most of a wide range of colors in the search for a stridency as it had been captured and conveyed by the German masters.
 At the beginning of 1919, Louis Mathieu Verdilhan settles in the area of “Lauves”, two steps away of Paul Cézanne’s Studio. His landscapes, as well as his port paintings relish in bent lines,  the pre-war colored heroism vanishes; soon Verdilhan partitions his colored flat tints with large black lines. Invited by Antoine Bourdelle to exhibit his works in 1920 in the the Unicorn gallery in Paris, he purposefully displayed a choice of paintings in accordance with the aesthetics of the time, mainly sights of the Port of Marseille.
Towards the end of his life, retired in a suburb of Marseille, proven by a larynx cancer, the painter darkens his last painting of the “Vieux Port”, where, in wan light, only some white emerges from an asphalt background.
This exhibition in the Yves Brayer Museum displays a didactic choice of 32 works inspired by the power and the colour: first sparkling, then flaring, then partitioning and finally splashing.

 

                                                                                                            
                                                      Daniel and Jean CHOL
                                               Art Experts in Aix-en-Provence

Musée Yves Brayer

Les Baux-de-Provence
Louis Valtat
(1869-1952)
May 7th- september 16th 2010

La famille Bompart sur les rochers rouges à Agay, circa 1898


Le port de la Ciotat, 1894

In the early thirties, the art galleries were very few and the “Salons” which took place in the “Grand-Palais” in Paris, were offering artists the opportunity of showing their works to a great number of visitors and professionals.

It was also the occasion to meet elder painters, sculptors or engravers who gave their opinion on the works mostly with a sympathetic encouragement to the author. Yves Brayer was admitted to the “Salon d’Automne” at 19 years old in 1927. This is where he met Louis Valtat, always wearing a cap, and very kind and helpful with the young artists.


In this “Salon d’Automne”, in 1905, the critic Louis Vauxcelles invented the word "Fauves" discovering the works of some young painters gathered together.This explosion of colour was rather short and, later, some of them returned to a more traditional vision. Louis Valtat was one of those who remained, during his life, faithful to the colour. His paintings remained joyful, dynamic, transmitting the pleasure he took to look around him and to seize in the landscapes the moments of happiness.

The development of the railroad during the second part of the XIXth century allowed to the artists to easily move to the south. Louis Valtat settled in Agay where it succeeded in sublimating the red rocks and the tormented shores. He joined the painters of the Mediterranean to which the Museum Yves Brayer often paid homage.


PRICES:
Adults                                 4.00 € per person
Groups                               2.50 € per person
Under 18                             Free

JUMELE TICKET:
Cathédrale d'Images and Museum Yves Brayer
Adults:                              10.50 € per person
7 to 17 years included      3.50 € per person
Less than 6 years                 Free

PASS:
Castle, Cathedral d'image and Museum Yves Brayer
Adults                                15.50 € per person
7 to 17 years including      7.50 € per person
Less than 6 years                  Free

 
Open every day from 10h to 12h30 and from 14h to 18h30
Informations : Tél : 01 43 54 00 01 - Fax : 01 46 33 41 18 -Email : obrayer@noos.fr

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