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Maurice Chabas (1862 - 1947) - The Bay Of Douarnenez
"The Red Sail" in Douarnenez Bay
Maurice Chabas, a sensitive and mystical artist, presents us with a seascape imbued with symbolist overtones. A gentle harmony and profound tranquility emanate from this seascape.
Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 54 x 65 cm
With frame: 67 x 77 cm
Maurice Chabas, His Love of Brittany
Born in Nantes, Maurice Chabas retained throughout his life a love for the Breton landscape, an essential source of his inspiration.
Brittany, a region that greatly inspired him, possesses that dimension of enigmatic serenity characteristic of the artist.
A peaceful nature imbued with gentle harmony.
Maurice Chabas naturally gravitated towards landscape painting, often imbuing it with a particular, contemplative, and mystical atmosphere. Serenity, contemplation, calm—these qualities convey the painter's state of mind at the moment of creation, reflecting the artist's unwavering and entirely internal tranquility.
In our particularly luminous painting, only the red sail of a boat animates the work, without this vivid accent disrupting the gentle harmony emanating from the landscape.
"From all these landscapes emanate serenity, peace, like a supreme detachment. Things seem to have lost their materiality. Their beauty tends toward the desire for absolute beauty, for that which is both harmonious and geometric." Written by the journalist and art critic Léon de Saint-Valéry on the landscapes of Maurice Chabas.
Biography
The Chabas: A Family of Artists
Maurice Chabas was born in Nantes. The son of a wealthy merchant and art enthusiast, he was the older brother of the painter Paul-Émile Chabas. His father, an amateur painter, encouraged the artistic vocations of his two sons, Maurice and Paul, while their elder brother, Charles, took over the family business. After attending the School of Fine Arts in Nantes, the two young men, whose family had moved to Paris, benefited from the tuition at the Académie Julian. Both students of William Bougereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, they gradually followed very different paths. Closer to his teachers, Paul-Émile developed a more worldly style, focusing on the female figure and the nude. Conversely, Maurice, after dedicating himself to a gallant Pre-Raphaelite style in the 1890s, gradually turned towards Symbolist landscape painting. It was this second phase that secured numerous purchases of Maurice Chabas's work by the French state.
Between 1907 and 1934, no fewer than thirteen works by Maurice Chabas, primarily oil landscapes, were acquired by the Fine Arts administration.
Most of these canvases are inspired by Brittany.
Maurice Chabas, an atypical painter
He simultaneously produced a body of work with highly diverse aesthetics. Moving seamlessly from academicism to Symbolism, the Nabis, or a certain abstraction, he refused to be confined to a single aesthetic and sought above all to elevate the spirit and reveal Beauty. His metaphysical reflections and spiritual quest led him to associate with theologians, Hindu mystics, astronomers such as Camille Flammarion, and spiritualists and occultists, including Joséphin Péladan, founder of the Salon de la Rose-Croix, where he exhibited from 1892 to 1897.
This plurality of styles is based on the same idealistic and spiritualist conception, which animates all his work. Chabas, in fact, was convinced of the social role of the artist as a spiritual guide.
He participated in the Salons and the Universal Expositions in Paris in 1900 and Brussels in 1910.
Decorative Paintings
In 1895, he was commissioned to decorate the buffet at the Lyon-Perrache train station with four large canvases mounted on the wall, depicting allegories in praise of Lyon silk.
In 1898, he won the competition for the decoration of the wedding hall at the Vincennes town hall. He created a set of seven canvases mounted on walls in 1902.
In 1900, he painted the Marseille canvas for the main room of the Le Train Bleu restaurant in the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.
The End of His Life
He painted almost exclusively religious subjects in a luminous, hazy style that tended toward abstraction. He lived in seclusion, far from his family, and died on December 11, 1947, at his home in Versailles.
Bibliography
• Léon Bazalgette, “Le Salon de la Rose-Croix,” Essais d'art libre, Girard, Paris, 1892.
• Henry Frantz, “Les peintures décoratifs de la nouvelle gare de Lyon,” L'Art décoratif, 1901, pp. 94–106. • Count Léonce de Larmandie, *L'entr'acte idéal*, Chacornac, Paris, 1903.
• Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, *Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart*, E. A. Seemann, Leipzig, 1912.
• Gustave Kahn, “Maurice Chabas,” *L'Art et les artistes*, no. 9, April 1913.
• Collective, *Maurice Chabas organise une exposition*, April 18, 1915 [incomplete reference].
• Gustave Kahn, *Maurice Chabas*, Galerie Devambez, Paris, 1922.
• Maurice
Maurice Chabas, a sensitive and mystical artist, presents us with a seascape imbued with symbolist overtones. A gentle harmony and profound tranquility emanate from this seascape.
Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 54 x 65 cm
With frame: 67 x 77 cm
Maurice Chabas, His Love of Brittany
Born in Nantes, Maurice Chabas retained throughout his life a love for the Breton landscape, an essential source of his inspiration.
Brittany, a region that greatly inspired him, possesses that dimension of enigmatic serenity characteristic of the artist.
A peaceful nature imbued with gentle harmony.
Maurice Chabas naturally gravitated towards landscape painting, often imbuing it with a particular, contemplative, and mystical atmosphere. Serenity, contemplation, calm—these qualities convey the painter's state of mind at the moment of creation, reflecting the artist's unwavering and entirely internal tranquility.
In our particularly luminous painting, only the red sail of a boat animates the work, without this vivid accent disrupting the gentle harmony emanating from the landscape.
"From all these landscapes emanate serenity, peace, like a supreme detachment. Things seem to have lost their materiality. Their beauty tends toward the desire for absolute beauty, for that which is both harmonious and geometric." Written by the journalist and art critic Léon de Saint-Valéry on the landscapes of Maurice Chabas.
Biography
The Chabas: A Family of Artists
Maurice Chabas was born in Nantes. The son of a wealthy merchant and art enthusiast, he was the older brother of the painter Paul-Émile Chabas. His father, an amateur painter, encouraged the artistic vocations of his two sons, Maurice and Paul, while their elder brother, Charles, took over the family business. After attending the School of Fine Arts in Nantes, the two young men, whose family had moved to Paris, benefited from the tuition at the Académie Julian. Both students of William Bougereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, they gradually followed very different paths. Closer to his teachers, Paul-Émile developed a more worldly style, focusing on the female figure and the nude. Conversely, Maurice, after dedicating himself to a gallant Pre-Raphaelite style in the 1890s, gradually turned towards Symbolist landscape painting. It was this second phase that secured numerous purchases of Maurice Chabas's work by the French state.
Between 1907 and 1934, no fewer than thirteen works by Maurice Chabas, primarily oil landscapes, were acquired by the Fine Arts administration.
Most of these canvases are inspired by Brittany.
Maurice Chabas, an atypical painter
He simultaneously produced a body of work with highly diverse aesthetics. Moving seamlessly from academicism to Symbolism, the Nabis, or a certain abstraction, he refused to be confined to a single aesthetic and sought above all to elevate the spirit and reveal Beauty. His metaphysical reflections and spiritual quest led him to associate with theologians, Hindu mystics, astronomers such as Camille Flammarion, and spiritualists and occultists, including Joséphin Péladan, founder of the Salon de la Rose-Croix, where he exhibited from 1892 to 1897.
This plurality of styles is based on the same idealistic and spiritualist conception, which animates all his work. Chabas, in fact, was convinced of the social role of the artist as a spiritual guide.
He participated in the Salons and the Universal Expositions in Paris in 1900 and Brussels in 1910.
Decorative Paintings
In 1895, he was commissioned to decorate the buffet at the Lyon-Perrache train station with four large canvases mounted on the wall, depicting allegories in praise of Lyon silk.
In 1898, he won the competition for the decoration of the wedding hall at the Vincennes town hall. He created a set of seven canvases mounted on walls in 1902.
In 1900, he painted the Marseille canvas for the main room of the Le Train Bleu restaurant in the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.
The End of His Life
He painted almost exclusively religious subjects in a luminous, hazy style that tended toward abstraction. He lived in seclusion, far from his family, and died on December 11, 1947, at his home in Versailles.
Bibliography
• Léon Bazalgette, “Le Salon de la Rose-Croix,” Essais d'art libre, Girard, Paris, 1892.
• Henry Frantz, “Les peintures décoratifs de la nouvelle gare de Lyon,” L'Art décoratif, 1901, pp. 94–106. • Count Léonce de Larmandie, *L'entr'acte idéal*, Chacornac, Paris, 1903.
• Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, *Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart*, E. A. Seemann, Leipzig, 1912.
• Gustave Kahn, “Maurice Chabas,” *L'Art et les artistes*, no. 9, April 1913.
• Collective, *Maurice Chabas organise une exposition*, April 18, 1915 [incomplete reference].
• Gustave Kahn, *Maurice Chabas*, Galerie Devambez, Paris, 1922.
• Maurice
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