Georges Paul Leroux (1877 - 1957)
Castle of Baux-de-Provence
Oil on canvas
Signed lower left: Georges Leroux
54 x 81 cm
« It is there, among the centuries and the landscapes, that once again Georges Leroux leads our thought, [. . . ] in front of these horizons written with inflexible purity, where the solitary acropolises erect in the countryside pedestals for the cities [1]. ”.
Born in Paris in 1877, Georges Leroux first studied at the École des arts décoratifs in Paris before being admitted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Léon Bonnat’s atelier. Premier Prix de Rome in 1906, he was a resident of the Villa Medicis between 1907 and 1909. His stay gave rise to a deep attachment to Italy, where he went almost every year for the rest of his life.
These warm colours, the bright and sunny universe that he loved so much in Italy and that he finds in Provence, he renders them here in a format that is more ambitious than those of the small landscapes he is accustomed to. The blue of the sky takes on its full extent above these immutable ruins bathed in the heat of the midday sun.
Perched on the one of the last foothills of the Alpilles massif, the Château des Baux is one of the oldest feudal remains in Europe. At the bottom of the western facade, which stands in front of us, was the Hare Hole [2]. Just behind, we can see the chapel Sainte-Catherine, dug out of the rock. In the background, overlooking the valley, stand the Paravelle tower and the keep.
1. Paul Hazard, Preface catalogue Exposure « Paysages latins. Peintures de Georges Leroux», Paris, Le Goupy, May 1924
2. This passage was both an escape route and a trap for the besieging.
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