French Naturalist Painters

A spotlight on French landscape painters of the first half of the 20th century which is a true hymn to nature Eight French painters born after 1870 are brought together for the first time in an exhibition that highlights their mutual affinities and charts their respective influences and evolutions. Aside from Gaston Balande (1880-1971), who is well known for his art deco wall murals designed for transatlantic ships, and Paul Deltombe (1878-1971), who benefited from a retrospective exhibition in 1970, the work of the other painters collected here has remained uncelebrated for far too long. The present exhibition and its catalogue aim to repair this oversight, as well as to reignite the study of this generation of French painters who, without turning their back on the avant-gardists, concentrated primarily on the traditional genre of landscape, and to a lesser degree on still-lifes. The 80 works of art, mainly painted between the wars, are at the crossroads of the many influences of this creative period, where tradition and the avant-garde blended together without restraint. This syncretism is frequently illustrated by landscapes where the diversity reflects the search for new effects and beautiful themes as well as an appetite for travel and discoveries. This panorama of Douce France signals the last breath for this pictorial style that was the inheritor and continuation of the Impressionist movement a status that was bound to be lost forever after the Second World War.