Marcel Gaillard - Sunset At Calvary

A Norman who trained at the Beaux-Arts in Rouen, Marcel Gaillard arrived in Paris in 1906. A bohemian, he easily fit into a student group in the Latin Quarter who were familiar with the Jardin du Luxembourg and, in bad weather, patrons of the brasserie La Lorraine. That same year, the Luxembourg counterfeiters affair broke. Due to his presence at the scene of the crime, the police searched for him and arrested him in Dieppe. His departure from Paris incriminating him: he was sentenced to seven months in prison. After a legal dismissal, he lived by painting postcards of Breton views and gouaches, which he sold on café terraces, as evidenced by our stencil with its Japanese accents and tones. He also sang in the streets with a fellow sufferer before inheriting a small nest egg that allowed him to move into the Hôtel de Sèvres with his partner Germaine, known as "Stella," and a painter friend. But our adventurous artist is once again wanted by the police and must flee to Belgium. Arrested and then exonerated, he then became a member of the Independents and exhibited in 1913 at the Salon d'Automne. After the First World War, he founded the Young French Painting group in 1918 and organized his first exhibition at the Manzi Gallery alongside Auguste Renoiret and Pierre Bonnard. In 1920, Gaillard won the French Equatorial Africa Prize and a travel grant that allowed him to discover the Congo and Sudan. He then spent time in Algeria. These African adventures opened the doors to the fashionable colonial art circles in Paris and Marseille. He was chosen to decorate the tea room of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, for which he created a huge diorama. At the end of his life, in 1943, he was taken in by a priest in Normandy for whom he undertook the frescoes for the Saint-Martin church in Liesville-sur-Douve, where he now rests.