Bernard Boutet de Monvel

Bernard Boutet de Monvel'studio

With Galerie du Passage, Paris

Where acquired, February 2000

Paris, Galerie Barbazanges, Le Maroc, Peintures et Bas-Reliefs de B. Boutet de Monvel, 2-23 May 1925, no. 11

New York, Anderson Galleries, The art of Bernard Boutet de Monvel : Paintings and bas-reliefs, 29 November - 25 December 1926, no. 78

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Twenty-Eight International Exhibition of Paintings, 17 October - 8 December 1929, no. 163

S.-J. Addade, 'Boutet de Monvel décorateur', in L'Œil, February 2000, no. 513, pp. 52-53, repr.

S.-J. Addade, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Paris 2001, pp. 150-151, repr.

S.-J. Addade, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Paris 2016, pp. 17-19, repr.

The son of the painter and illustrator Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Bernard Boutet de Monvel followed in his father’s footsteps and distinguished himself in a variety of techniques, ranging from painting and sculpture to etching. He became one of the most emblematic figures of the Art Deco movement, both in France and the United States, and during the 1920s and 1930s was the leading portraitist of Parisian and New York high society. From the outset of his career, he exhibited at the Paris Salons and quickly gained recognition for his engravings and paintings.

Having set aside his artistic career at the beginning of the Frist World War – during which he served as an aviator before being wounded – he requested a posting in Marocco at the end of 1917. There, he discovered North Africa, a land he had previously known only through his father’s drawings and paintings. In 1918, he arrived in Fez, where he was particularly inspired by the landscapes and settings, which are transformed by the sun’s path. It was there that he began to paint again. His Moroccan works are marked by their great sobriety and stand apart from orientalist clichés.

The painting shown here is part of a series of cactus representations begun in Fez, executed in oil on canvas and on plaster between 1918 and 1919. One such example, Cactus (Sun) (Fez, 1918, oil on canvas, 85 x 113.5 cm, private collection), shows how the series gave Boutet de Monvel the opportunity to explore the variation of light at different times of day on a plant emblematic of hot and arid landscapes. This approach recalls that of the Impressionist painters and of his friend Jacques Majorelle. The artist merges the Moroccan natural world with a graphic minimalism, using pure and repetitive lines, sharply defined forms, and avoiding picturesque or folkloric elements. He adopts the sobriety and purity of natural colours, employing a restrained palette of greys, greens and beiges, and plays with lighting effects, shadows, and the geometric, synthetic and streamlined structure of the plant.;

These paintings reveal the significance of the artist’s Moroccan stay in the development of his work, which he would revisit in later projects. Thus, in 1925, Boutet de Monvel produced eight large painted panels of statues for Madame Charlotte Edeline’s Villa Dorrea, in Ahetze, near Biarritz. In the background of these trompe-l'œil depictions of classical deities – such as Apollo, Hebe and Abundance – he chose to include cactuses similar to those in the present composition. The connection between these works is further evidenced by a photograph of the artist’s Paris studio, showing the decorative panels alongside the oil painting.