Description
Marie Auguste Emile René Ménard (French, 1862-1930)
L’enlèvement d’Europe, 1915 The Rape of Europa
Pastel on board. Art Nouveau Art Deco
28-1/4 x 42-1/4 inches (71.8 x 107.3 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E.R. Ménard 1915
PROVENANCE:
Galeries Georges Petit, Paris; Audap & Mirabaud, Paris, November 13, 2014, lot 119;
Condition Repor: Very good; wear indicative of age. Some scratches to frame.
Framed Dimensions 47 X 32.75 X 3 Inches
Ménard studied at the Academy Jullian from 1880 after having been a student of Baudry, Bouguereau, and Henri Lehmann. He participated in the Salon of the Secession in Munich, and the Salon de la Libre Esthétique in Brussels during 1897. Several personal exhibitions were also devoted to him at the Georges Small Gallery. In 1921 he exhibited in the Twelfth Salon along with Henri Martin and Edmond Aman-Jean. Galleries in Buffalo, New York and Boston, Massachusetts exposed Menard and his art to the United States. However, the numerous commissions that Ménard received from the French government crowned his career; for example, the cycle for the Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne, the Faculté de Droit, and the fresco Atoms for the Chemistry institute, and finally the Caise des Dépôts in Marseilles.
Ménard’s art allies a rigorous, clear classicism with a diffuse and dreamlike brushwork. In 1894, Victor Shoe wrote of Menard in l’ Art et la Vie (Art and Life): “visions of a pacified, bathed nature, of dawn and of twilight, where the soul seems to immerse itself in the innocence of daybreak, and breathe the divine anointment that comes with the dawn.”
“Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions”