MARONIEZ Georges French Painting End XIXè The Return Of The Fishermen Oil On Canvas Signed

MARONIEZ Georges (1865/1933)

The return of the fishermen.

Oil on canvas signed lower left.

65x81 cm

Certificate of authenticity.

Museums: Boulogne sur mer, Lille, Valenciennes, Douai, Cambrai, New York.

Georges, Philibert, Charles MARONIEZ, born in Douai in 1865 and died in Paris in 1933, French painter. Son of an industrialist, manufacturer of sugar in Montigny-en-Ostrevent, Georges Maroniez very early on showed a taste and gifts for drawing and painting. His father encouraged him but also asked him to study law, the profession of artist being little considered at the time. At the end of his studies, he began a career as a magistrate, successively in Boulogne-sur-Mer (1891), Avesnes-sur-Helpe (1894) and Cambrai (1897). assiduously the academic courses of the School of Fine Arts of Douai, and in 1880 becomes the pupil of Pierre Billet (1837-1922) in Cantin. There he met the painter Adrien Demont (1851-1928), son-in-law of the famous Jules Breton (1827-1906). On the latter's advice, he presented his first painting at the Salon de Douai, then in 1887 in Paris Soleil couchant in Esquerchin. On vacation in Wissant, he became friends with the couple Adrien Demont - Virginie Breton, with whom he discovered the landscapes. of the coast. Every summer for several years, around the Demont-Bretons, he will meet his friends from Douais: Fernand Stievenart, Henri and Marie Duhem, Félix Planquette. It was the time of the Wissant group. We will also talk about the school of the Opal Coast, including painters from Berck friends of the Demont-Bretons, one of the most illustrious being Francis Tattegrain (1852-1915). Thanks to the presentation and sponsorship of Adrien Demont, Georges Maroniez became a member of the French Artists in 1889. Inventive, curious and practical at the same time, he was interested in photography and invented a first hand-held camera, then a second even simpler, the Sphynx, devices he patented in 1891. The shots taken with this portable device are invaluable to him for capturing seaside scenes: departure and return of fishermen, unloading of fish… scenes that he will then reproduce on canvas in the workshop. He also brought back from his many trips to the Mediterranean (North Africa, Italy, Palestine, Egypt…) multiple photos on glass plates. His creativity is constantly on the alert, so he imagines and builds a cinematographic device working with Lumière film and in which the trepidation of the images is suppressed, a device which he presents in January 1899 to the Société photographique de Cambrai. He married in 1899 to Cambrai Jeanne Dutemple; the couple will have three daughters, Germaine, Simone and Madeleine. In 1905, the success of his painting and the consequences of the Combes ministry decided him to resign from the bench and to devote himself entirely to his art. Mobilized in 1914, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in July 1918. His workshop was looted and his wife deported during the occupation of the North. The Maroniez family moved to Paris, rue d'Aguesseau in 1919. Now inspired mainly by Brittany, Georges Maroniez's painting was very popular in France and abroad; He died of a heart attack in Paris on December 11, 1933. He was buried in the family vault in Cambrai. A young adolescent, Georges Maroniez began to paint around Douai while Corot, Millet, Courbet, the great landscape masters died. First a painter of the countryside and rural life, with a naturalistic, very classic, even academic style, he then developed in contact with the Wissant school towards seascapes, more precisely landscapes and seaside scenes. excels in this genre to the point of being presented as a painter of the sea, which he will reject. Painter of the languors and anger of the sea, he represents the life of seafarers; in coastal landscapes and port scenes, he endeavors to capture the daily life of humble fishermen and their families, the hard work, courage, waiting. He is also the painter of a republican France rural and prosperous after more than 40 years of peace, and of a still little mechanized civilization, of horses and sailing boats. A world that will disappear with the First World War: from the 1920s, motor trawlers will eliminate the fleets of fishing sailboats that have provided him with so many subjects for paintings.His work is abundant and disseminated in France, Europe and in North America. It is estimated at more than 800 paintings, to which are added thousands of studies, pochades and preparatory drawings, as well as his numerous photographic views.