29/6/23 - Acquisition - Le Puy-en-Velay, Musée Crozatier - A new painting by Guy François has joined the collections of the Musée Crozatier. It fetched €39,360 (including fees) at the Tajan sale on 21 June, thanks to the support of the Fonds régional pour les acquisitions des musées de France Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and the Haute-Loire département. A native of Le Puy-en-Velay, where he spent much of his career, Guy François is particularly well represented at the Musée Crozatier, which since its pioneering retrospective of his work in 1974 has been collecting - through purchases, donations and deposits - a significant body of his work, most of which is still housed in churches, mainly in Auvergne, and particularly in the Velay region.
-
- Guy François (1580-1650)
The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1630-1640
Oil on canvas - 262 x 195 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Musée Crozatier
Photo: Musée Crozatier - See the image in its page
A fortunate addition, The Adoration of the Shepherds acquired by the museum endows it with a first large altar painting by the artist. The fifteen pictures already conserved - seven of which came from the Saint-Claire monastery and are long-term loaned by the Association diocésaine du Puy - are all smaller works of private devotion. These include the panel of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Virgin and Child Surrounded by Two Saints, two recent acquisitions we reported on (see news items of 20/11/14 and 4/4/16).
While the inscription on the canvas in the central left-hand section specifies the author and his origin, "GUIDO FRANCESCUS ANICIENSIS... INVENIT & FECIEBAT". - Aniciensis" is the adjective used for Le Puy - only the first two digits of the date are legible, "16..". Listed by Bruno Saunier in his remarkable monograph on the artist (see article), published by Arthena in 2018, the painting is dated after 1630 by stylistic comparison. Although the history of the work was not specified at the time, the very recent identification of the coat of arms - represented in the top left-hand corner of the composition - makes it possible to specify the context of the commission. As stated by Maud Leyoudec, Director of the Musée Crozatier and the Pays d’Art et d’Histoire du Puy-en-Velay [1], Martin de Framond, honorary director of the Haute-Loire departmental archives, was able to establish as part of the acquisition that these were the emblems of a Brun family, a middle-class family from Mende in the 17th and 18th centuries who had links with Puy-en-Velay. On 25 January 1628, Guillaume Brun, sieur du Bruel et du Fau, married Jacqueline de Retz, daughter of Pierre, seigneur de Servières, and Marguerite Leblanc, originally from Le Puy. Their family coat of arms was blazoned "Or, on a chevron Azure two lions facing each other Argent, between three torteaux Azure".
The Adoration of the Shepherds is not an isolated subject in the artist’s work. Thus, of the one hundred and thirty-one works listed by Bruno Saunier in his catalogue raisonné, thirteen illustrate this iconography. Among them, two present a very similar composition. One is conserved in the parish church of Saint-Mathieu in Salers, dated 1633, and the other in the church of Saint-André in Massiac. Against an architectural background, the central part depicts the Virgin and Child surrounded by six figures, divided into two groups of three, with varying poses and attitudes. They are surmounted by three cherubs holding a phylactery bearing the inscription "Gloria in excelcis Deo". The figure of the flute-player is new. According to Bruno Saunier, this composition is characteristic of the art of Guy François, which can be defined by "the absence of artifice, by the profound humility of his characters, local people whose common sense can be perceived, but also by the true faith that drives them in the face of the mystery of Creation. In short, Guy François has created a style of painting that reflects the French spirit, one of realism and balance".