Maurice Millière (1871–1946) Hunting Manor House In A Park, Dedicated To Victor Petitpas

Maurice MILLIÈRE (1871–1946)Manor House in an Autumn Park, dedicated to Victor Petitpas

Oil on canvas — signed and dedicated lower right: "à l'ami Victor Petitpas, en souvenir d'un mois passé au chalet de l'Étang, octobre 1939, Maurice Millière" ("to my friend Victor Petitpas, in memory of a month spent at the Chalet de l'Étang, October 1939, Maurice Millière")

Canvas: 45 × 64 cm (17.7 × 25.2 in) — Frame: 58 × 78 cm (22.8 × 30.7 in)

October light bathes this countryside scene: a neo-Gothic manor house, draped in ivy and flanked by tall brick chimneys, emerges from a curtain of trees ablaze with autumn colour. In the foreground, a figure with a gun over his shoulder and a dog at his side walks along a white picket fence that structures the composition and leads the eye toward the façade. The palette — ochres, deep greens, touches of rust — captures this season of transition with real sensitivity; the brushwork, fluid and confident, reveals a practised hand, equally at ease with foliage and architecture.

The painting bears a handwritten dedication lower right, addressed "to my friend Victor Petitpas" and dated October 1939 — the very first weeks of the Second World War (declared September 3rd). This inscription anchors the work in a precise moment and gives it documentary and sentimental value beyond its purely pictorial interest: it is a painted memory of a month spent among friends, at the "Chalet de l'Étang," on the eve of the upheaval that was to follow. The very name of the place — modest, likely familiar only to those who knew it — adds to the intimacy of the dedication: this was not a commission, but an artist's gift to a friend.

A contemporary of Louis Icart, Millière achieved success beyond France: his work was reprinted in American periodicals during the 1920s, and his style directly influenced two founding figures of American pin-up art, Alberto Vargas and Enoch Bolles. He also travelled to the French Antilles in the late 1920s, producing paintings and drawings exhibited at the Salon of the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français; this period earned him the Légion d'Honneur for colonial service in 1930. The following year he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français. He taught painting and drawing in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and died in Yport in 1946.