Tramonto di Emile Maillard

Emile MAILLARD ( 1846 / 1926 )
Sunset.
Oil on cardboard signed lower right.
7,48 x 9,25 in
Emile MAILLARD ( 1846 / 1926 )
Émile Marie Honoré Maillard, known as Émile Maillard, born June 2, 1846 in Amiens and died July 23, 1926 in Le Havre, is a French painter mainly known for his navies representing the coasts of Normandy, Picardy and Boulonnais.
Pupil of the Julian Academy in 1886, he was appointed Official Painter of the Navy in May 1891 and Academy officer in February 1899.
Émile Maillard comes from a bourgeois family established in Amiens for several generations. Her parents, Alexandre Eugène Maillard (1806-1893) and Victoire Clarisse Hordé (1808-1881) derived their prosperity from the fabric manufacturing and trading business created in the early 19th century by Émile's maternal ancestors and administered by his father at n ° 15 rue des Clairons (Amiens). Two of the four children of the Maillard-Hordé couple having died in infancy, Émile will live an adolescence of only child, his older sister Clara being already 15 years old when he was born on June 2, 1846, at the address of family business, residence of his parents.
During the Franco-German War which broke out in July 1870 and ended with the French defeat leading to the fall of the Second Empire and the occupation of the city of Amiens by the Prussians in December 1870, Émile, aged 24, served as captain of the Somme Mobile National Guard. He was appointed in December 1875 to the rank of lieutenant in the 12th territorial infantry regiment, a rank which he resigned in March 1880. Despite this resignation, Alexandre Millerand, Minister of War, awarded him, on October 10, 1912, the Commemorative Medal for the war 1870-1871 instituted by the law of November 9, 1911.
In the first years of the Third Republic (1871-1900), the city of Amiens developed and experienced a cultural renaissance favoring the arts, a revival to which Émile Maillard made his contribution in the field of graphic arts. He became a member of the Society of Friends of the Arts in the Department of the Somme and remained so until 1913. In July 1879, he participated, at the age of 33, in the annual exhibition of painting and drawing that this Society organized and obtains the mention "Honorable".
The death of his mother, which occurred in March 1881 greatly affected the artist, and his father encouraged him to move away from the family home to paint the seaside subjects he loved, in the Somme bay and on the Picardy coast and the Opal coast, from Etaples to Dunkirk. During his travels, he was assisted by Marie Frion (1855-1934), a young employee of the family business whom he married in Amiens on November 11, 1891. Three sons were born from this union: Marcel (1889-1945), Maurice (1892-1971) and Pierre (1893-1915).
In 1884, Émile Maillard became Associate of French artists and now regularly exhibits his works in Amiens, then in Paris. In July 1885, at the age of 39, he obtained a silver medal at the Amiens exhibition with three works on display: Falling tide, Farm entrance and Farmyard. In 1886, he was admitted as a student at the Académie Julian on the recommendation of Emile Renouf. In February 1888 and 1889 (Universal Exhibition), he participated in the Salon of the Society of French Artists in Paris and twice obtained the mention "Honorable", especially for the painting entitled The last aid kept at the Museum of Picardy in Amiens. Until the end of the century, Émile continued to exhibit and won several awards, in particular a bronze medal at the Paris Salon in February 1893 and a gold medal at Amiens.
On May 16, 1891, Émile Maillard was appointed Official Painter of the Navy, an appointment that the Minister of Marine, Édouard Barbey, announced to him on May 20 through Albert Dauphin, Senator for the Somme who supported the candidacy of the artist's recommendation.
After the death of their father in October 1893, Émile and his sister Clara sold the family fabric business, which provided the painter with the financial income allowing him to continue to devote himself exclusively to his art. He had himself built in the Saint-Acheul district of Amiens, a beautiful house where he installed his workshop.
Since 1891, France and Tsarist Russia have come together to counterbalance Prussia. The positive development of diplomatic relations between the two countries culminated in the Franco-Russian Alliance, a military cooperation agreement ratified on January 4, 1894 by the French government. In this context, an official visit of the Russian sovereigns to France is organized for October 1896. In his capacity as Official Painter of the Navy, Émile Maillard informs the cabinet of the Minister of the Navy of his intention to take as subject of a next painting the arrival in Cherbourg of the Tsar's imperial yachts, the Polar Star and the Standart escorted by the jewels of the French navy. On September 8, 1896, the Minister’s Cabinet confirmed his agreement and invited Vice-Admiral Henri Rieunier, Commander-in-Chief, Prefect of the 1st Maritime District, to give the painter all the facilities for the accomplishment of his project. Having executed his painting entitled The North Sea Wing at Cherbourg and representing this squadron escorting the imperial yacht on the arrival of Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fiodorovna from Russia in the harbor of Cherbourg on October 5, 1896, Émile made an offering to the Minister of Marine for the Hôtel du Ministère. The tribute was accepted by the Cabinet of the Ministry on June 12, 1897. During the second official visit to France of the Russian sovereigns, in 1901, Émile painted two new canvases commemorating the arrival of the Russian imperial yacht Le Standart in Dunkirk on September 18, 1901, Le Cassini and Le Standart pass the review of the squadron at Dunkirk and Le Cassini carrying the President of the Republic (The Cassini is the ship on which the President of the Republic Émile Loubet embarked to welcome at sea the Tsar Nicholas II).
On February 27, 1899, at the age of 52, Émile Maillard was appointed Academy Officer by order of the Minister of Public Education and Fine Arts.
In the first years of the 20th century, the financial income from the sale of the family business was exhausted, Émile had to sell his house in the Saint-Acheul district in Amiens. He settled with his family at n ° 25 Car Street in Amiens, where the couple and their three sons were listed in 1906. The painter was then 60 years old. The last twenty years of his life were marked by a reduction in his financial resources and the dramatic upheavals brought about by the First World War. On July 14, 1915, Pierre Maillard, the couple’s youngest child, Lieutenant Saint-Cyrien in the 2nd Battalion of the 72nd Infantry Regiment, 21 years old, was killed in action in Argonne during the Bois-Volante offensive. He was named to the order of the Third Army and received the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor. The town of Amiens is very close to the front, which forced Émile and his wife into exile in Morlaix (Finistère) in early 1917. On May 15, 1917, Émile, aged 70, learned that Marcel, his eldest son, second lieutenant in the 272nd infantry regiment was taken prisoner. Released after the armistice, the latter was awarded the Croix de guerre and honored with the Fourragère.
During his exile in Morlaix, Émile Maillard did not stop painting despite his age (over 70 years). He is in particular in contact with Mr. Picot, owner of the gallery of permanent exhibition of paintings of the French School operating in Paris (39, rue Damrémont) and in Zurich, gallery to which he sells several dozen paintings. He grants this gallery exclusivity for the sale of his works in Switzerland in exchange for the latter's intermediation with the Berne Rescue Office for the transmission of parcels to his son Marcel prisoner in Germany against remuneration deducted from the proceeds of the sale of his paintings and in the hope of obtaining the transfer of the prisoner to Switzerland. The gallery's orders relate to seascapes, the painter's specialty, but also to representations of the trenches which met with great commercial success. Other paintings from this period represent the interior of the house known as the Duchess Anne of Brittany, remarkable for its spiral staircase secured to a single-piece oak column of 11 m, decorated with sculptures of the patron saints.
At the end of the year 1920, Émile and his wife left Morlaix and, despite their desire to return to Amiens, their hometown, resigned themselves to settle in Le Havre where their two surviving sons now resided. It is in this city of Le Havre that Emile paints his last paintings and that he dies on July 23, 1926, at the age of 80, in his rented home at n ° 10 rue du Docteur Lecadre. He is buried in the family vault of the cemetery of La Madeleine in Amiens.
On July 23, 1960, the City Council of the city of Amiens decided to name the road connecting rue de la Folie to rue Terral (currently the road connecting rue Terral to rue de l'Abbé Hénocque, between Saint Maurice and Sainte-Thérèse neighborhoods of Enfant-Jésus / Pigeonnier) Rue Maillard named after Émile Maillard, talented painter.
Émile Maillard was a pupil of Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1834-1912), teachers who both taught in Paris, at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and at the Julian Academy. He also benefited from the teachings of Ulysse Butin (1838-1883), Ernest Ange Duez (1843-1896) and Emile Renouf (1845-1894).
Among his pupils, he included Charles Cottet (1863-1925), naturalist and orientalist painter whose several works are kept in public collections, as well as Gabrielle Morin (1854-1933), painter attached to Normandy and more particularly to the northern gates of the province since the region of Eu, where she lived, inspired her many paintings having the subject as sea. His works are partly preserved at the Louis-Philippe Museum at the Château d’Eu, a museum that paid tribute to the artist in the spring of 2008.
Émile also befriended Albert Bance and Jules Victor Verdier, two painters who were his witnesses during his marriage in 1891.
Émile Maillard is especially recognized for the quality of his navies. A contemporary critic claimed to have made this artist, "who knew how to translate the sea with so much sincerity and emotion", his favorite artist. According to this critic: "Émile Maillard has a sense of movement of the vast liquid element and the water it represents always has, which is rare, all its fluidity. His painting L’épi summarizes all its qualities as much by the majestic allure of the waves as by the powerful color of the pier which contrasts with the always a little transparent aspect of the sea, even when it is dismantled. "
Another author makes the following judgment: "Mr. Émile Maillard's marines reveal a familiar of the sea, an observer of winds and storms, dark skies, precursors of thunderstorms. In 1887, he exhibited Offshore, a disrupted sea effect, with a few fishing boats fleeing on the horizon. The last aid (see below) represents a jetty overgrown with waves, on which we see sailors accompanied by their wives pushing a cart full of life-saving appliances. All these good people want to rescue a ship in distress that can be seen in the distance. The scene is dramatic. Heavy weather in Boulogne, On the coast, During the storm, Steam stranded outside the pier, the Wreck, show us wrathful seas in different aspects that the artist has treated very well. "
The Musée de Picardie in Amiens has an oil painted by Émile Maillard called The Last Aid. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1888 and obtained the mention "Honorable". This painting entered the museum in 1905, before the artist’s death, by purchase from the Commission.
Three of his paintings are kept at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.