Emile René Ménard - Bucolic - Circa 1900-1910 - Pastel - Landscape

Exhibition: René Ménard, Exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit, June 16 - July 25, 1914, number 109

Émile-René Ménard was born into a family of connoisseurs. His father, René Ménard, is director of "la Gazette des Beaux-Arts" and counts Corot and Millet as friends. Through contact with the painters of Barbizon, his son discovered painting, favoring, like his masters, outdoor painting and on the motif. Émile-René perfected his technique with the very academic Baudry and Bouguereau, then joined the Académie Julian.

Member of the group "La Bande Noire", Ménard remains marked by his participation in the Salon de la Secession in Munich. The Universal Exhibitions, the Salon des Douze with Henri Martin in 1921, the Salon in Paris, the exhibitions in Madrid with Rodin, in Venice, Buffalo and Boston confirm his talent and his success. Appointed officer of the Legion of Honor, the French State crowned his career with the commissioning of cycles of frescoes for the Faculty of Law of the Sorbonne or for the Institute of Chemistry.

Today presented in all the most important Modern Art museums, Ménard is of course visible at the Orsay Museum which keeps sixteen oils on canvas by the artist. However, it is with the unique technique of pastel on canvas that the art of Emile-René Ménard finds its best means of expression. The pulverulence of the medium and the flexibility of the support best reflect the peaceful atmosphere and the immobile grandeur of the artist's works. The work that we are presenting repeats the influence of Puvis de Chavannes and symbolism on a Ménard, who, concerned with finding his own way, remained deaf to the sirens of impressionism and the avant-garde.

Our artist is more part of this movement of rediscovered Antiquity which attracted some very talented artists at the dawn of the 20th century; last neoclassicism of which Maillol and Bourdelle were the great representatives as sculptors. An avid reader of the Ancients and in particular of Virgil, Ménard discovered the Idylls of Theocritus thanks to Leconte de Lisle. The theme of our painting is to be compared to this bucolic literature. The title chosen by the artist would be enough to demonstrate this. Our painting is a perfect illustration of the few words of Victor Soulier who in 1894 in L'Art et la Vie admired Ménard's "visions of a pacified nature, bathed in dawn and dusk, where the soul seems to soak itself again in the candor of the dawns.”