The work of some painters urges us to discover more about it, even without our claiming to know it all. Marius Borgeaud is one of those artists. Between 1960 and today already three monographs have tried to enlighten the course of this at least unusual but appealing character. Many of his major canvases are possessed by the Lausanne Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts and the Pully Museum, without counting those, numerous, owned by Swiss and French private collectors. In our country the latest exhibitions devoted to the "Vaudois de Paris" took place at the Jenisch Museum in 1993 and at the Winthertur Kunstmuseum in 1999. From November 16, 2001 till January 20, 2002, it is this time the Pierre Gianadda Foundation which dedicates him an important retrospective.
Although he was born in Lausanne in 1861,-a commemorative tablet was even affixed on the wall of his last residence there on December 7, 1999, on the occasion of the publication of the descriptive catalogue established by Bernard Wyder- it was in Paris, early in the 19th century, that he made his début as a pupil in the Humbert studio. Did he enter the Fine Arts to try and forget a rather turbulent period of his youth, during which he had gaily squandered the inheritance he had come into on the death of his father ? However one soon finds him in Poitou and in Seine-et-Marne, at Moret-sur-Loing. The mood is then frankly impressionist. But Marius Borgeaud doesn't make himself noticed by exposing paintings pandering to the taste of the day. He acts as a free man who is in love with Brittany and who evokes it in an eminently personal manner, without ever ceding to folklore. And from the exhibitions at Blot's and Druet's the works of this Breton-at-heart start to catch the attention of the critics and meet with increasing success.
The interior refiner
Apart from a few landscapes, street scenes, portraits or still lives, Borgeaud feels attracted by the poetic aspects of interiors, showing town halls, bedrooms, chemists' shops and especially a great number of cafés. He had started off with depicting his room or the inn in which he stayed. Very quickly he becomes the reporter of his time and of the places he visits. The three landmarks of his pictorial itinerary follow one another with little in common : Rochefort-en-Terre and Le Faouët (both in Morbihan), then Audierne and its bay, in Finistère, this being his last trip before his death on July16, 1924, in his Parisian home.
New works are cropping up
The compiler of the descriptive catalogue knew that unknown paintings by Marius Borgeaud were sooner or later going to crop up. Assuming that the artist had painted about 350 canvases, they took the precaution to consider, in the inventory of his work, that some had left no visual trace. Today the catalogue of the Martigny retrospective displays 16 "new" paintings. Some of them are even shown for the first time ! By another good fortune, a canvas was recently discovered behind another, revealing a magnificent landscape of Locquirec, dated 1908. Jacques Dominique Rouiller, who commissioned the exhibition, had other good surprises too. For example, he ran across the photos that Dr. Victor Doiteau had taken at the painter's in July 1924, a few days before his death.
The commitment of an Association
The Friends of Marius Borgeaud Association(AAMB), founded in 1993 for the promotion of the artist's work, has not been wasting its time. Few cultural institutions of this kind have, in so short a time, carried out such varied projects as creating a yearly bulletin, holding lectures, organising a trip to Brittany, supporting the preparation of exhibitions, recording a video retracing the painter's career, publishing postcards, and finally guiding the retrospective presented at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation. By reproducing some of the talks given at the general meetings of the Association the exhibition catalogue devotes space to the people who have been focusing their attention on Borgeaud's work. And money being the sinews of war, no project could have been realised without the support of the AAMB members and of generous and faithful sponsors.
The painter's easel among other objects
Apart from about one hundred canvases, to which have been added portraits of the artist by Picabia, Maurice Asselin and especially Edouard Morerod, the retrospective includes a number of objects that belonged to Borgeaud, among which his easel. The latter was preserved with other items of furniture thanks to Maître Emile-Jean Teissèdre, residuary legatee of the Bernard-Borgeaud couple (Madeleine Borgeaud, as it happens, remarried René Bernard). Besides, a mass of unpublished documents will be on display in the showcases to provide a better understanding of the personality of this atypical painter who knew his work would meet with success, but post mortem !
Apart from his incomparable handling of light, between the interiors and the exteriors, there is, about nearly all Marius Borgeaud's canvases, a captivating air of permanence or ever-lastingness. To this, one can add the qualities of a master of colour and subject that in no way conceals the inspired "builder" with the inimitable style.
C.o Jacques Dominique Rouiller, rue de la Mercerie 1,
1003 Lausanne. Tél. et fax 021 312 42 23 E-mail :
jdrouiller@vtx.ch
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