Marie Antoinette Boullard-Deve

Private Collection, France

The work is in good condition overall. Framed, under Plexiglas.
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This exceptional and impressive composition synthesizes the passion, the commitment and the achievement of Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devée during the time she spent working and travelling in Indochina as an artist painter.

Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devée was born around 1890 in Paris; until 1908 she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris (School of Fine Arts of Paris) in the studio of the painter Frédéric Humbert. Since her very first artworks dating from this period, her works already correspond to the Art Deco style. She settles with her husband in Indochina in the early 1920’s where she travels - in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia - and works. Thus, she depicts the Indochinese inhabitants, their costumes, their traditions and their cultural habits.   

In 1921 she receives the Prize of the Compagnie de la Navigation Mixte, a French maritime company. One year later, her artworks are exhibited at the National Colonial Exhibition of Marseille. She also participated to the very important International Colonial Exhibition of Paris in 1931, the first exhibition that revealed the talents and brilliant works of the students from the Hanoi School of Fine Arts, such as Le Pho, Nguyen Phan Chanh, Vu Cao Dam, Georges Khanh… For this exhibition, Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devée executed for the main central staircase of the Indochina Pavillon a 40 meters long fresco - a composition that represents the variety and the richness of Indochinese people on a luxurious gold background. A part of this fresco is nowadays preserved at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (The museum of the arts and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania and America).

Five characters compose this painting dated from 1932, executed in her medium of predilection, oil painting on paper fixed on canvas, in a carefully chosen square format. This format conveys an impression of intimacy and of condensation of the subject of the scene. Indeed, the luxurious Indochinese vegetation composed of banana tree leafs painted in various shades of green embodies the region and the nature of this land. A young boy stands in the middle, held by three Vietnamese women, while a young girl stands on the side. This symbolic subject matter announces, through this central character of the young boy, the birth of the young nation of modern Vietnam. The three ladies are wearing the three traditional costumes of Center (Annam), South (Cochinchina) and North Vietnam (Tonkin). The young girl reminds us, in a subtle symbol, the modern young women of Indochina too. The delicacy of French taste is tangible only in the flowerbed on the foreground of the composition. The little blue and white ceramic covered jar states for the popular preference of Vietnamese people for this kind of craft.  

Retrospectively and by comparison, our painting could be looked at in relation with Victor Tardieu’s monumental fresco from the Hanoi University finished in 1929, with its solemn and dense aesthetic that corresponds to a decorative taste combined with an historical and ceremonial dimension. The hieratic and symbolical postures witness the intention of the artist, along with a positive wish concerning modernity in Vietnam in these years of renewal.

Two artworks from Marie-Antoinette Boulard-Devée executed in the same medium of predilection – oil on paper – are kept in the museum of Fine Arts of Marseille and at the musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

The next lot sold after this painting is composed of a huge sized original portfolio of 20 plates printed entitled “Visions of Indochina”, that uses the special French process Perrin for its printed images, all signed and annotated by Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devée and held into a cardboard protection. Published in 1929, the portfolio includes a long humanistic foreword by the French writer Marc Chadoune, followed by the reproduction of 20 major works by the artist in her Indochinese years mostly consisting in sketches and paintings of Vietnamese people. Some of these sketches were used in the execution of our artwork from 1932.