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Paul Lucien Maze, French/British 1887-1979 browse these categories for related items... All Items: Fine Art:Paintings:Oil:Europe:British: Pre 1950: item # 973240
SUSQUEHANNA Antique Company, Inc. 3216 O Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20007 (202)333-1511 Guest Book POR |
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| Oil on canvas, signed lower right, 18" x 22" and 25" x 28 framed. Bio from Albany Gallery in the UK: Paul Lucien Maze was born in 1887 into an artistic circle in Le Havre, Normandy, of Anglo-French parentage. His father was a prosperous commodities merchant, art collector and friend of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963), Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), Raoul Dufy (French, 1877-1953) and Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903). Of all his painter friends, it was Vuillard who influenced him most profoundly. Vuilllard took a keen interest in Maze’s work and suggested that Maze could offer a unique contribution to the world of art through the medium of pastels, the medium he felt best suited to conveying the freshness so evident in his work. Maze described this visit as like being “taken by God to meet God”. Vuillard had offered good advice: pastels ideally suited Maze’s style and temperament and became his favourite medium due to their great colour range and directness of application to the paper. Maze also painted in oils and watercolour but he is perhaps best known for his masterful works in pastel. Maze was naturalized as a British subject in 1920, shortly after his marriage to the widow of a wartime friend, Captain Thomas Nelson. Hereafter he exhibited regularly at major galleries in London, Paris and America. It has been said that England took its revenge for losing the English Impressionist Alfred Sisley (British/French, 1839-1899) to France by adopting Paul Maze. In his foreword to the catalogue of Maze's first New York exhibition in 1939, Winston Churchill wrote, "His great knowledge of painting and draughtsmanship have enabled him to perfect his remarkable gift. With the fewest of strokes he can create an impression at once true and beautiful. Here is no toiling seeker after preconceived effects, but a vivid and powerful interpreter to us of the forces and harmony of Nature". And, at the time of Maze's exhibition in Paris in 1945, his friend Segonzac wrote, "Paul Maze is above all an intuitive artist; he is the antithesis of the contemporary school of painting which wishes to ignore nature and to practice an art of the laboratory. Paul Maze's Norman origin, his childhood spent in the region of the estuary of the Seine, classifies him with the painters of Honfleur, Rouen, Havre. Jongkind, Boudin, Claude Monet are his visual ancestors; and, like them, with his 'gris colore' he is the poet of the sky and water. Marvelously gifted, overflowing with life, his talent evokes wonderfully everything that is fluid, mobile and living in Nature." Such were the opinions of two of Paul Maze’s contemporary artists: one a professional, the other a gifted amateur. In London Maze held exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery and a major retrospective Paul Maze and the Guards at Wildensteins in 1973. His skill as a pastellist brought him world renown and 1983 saw major exhibitions of his work in New York and London. In the same year Anne Singer published a biography of his fascinating life in ‘Paul Maze. The Lost Impressionist’ (Aurum Press, London, 1983). Maze contributed in a singular way to the advancement of art by offering a profound understanding of simple beauty expressed through the special quality of pastels. The unusual lightness and translucence of the medium suited his temperament and subject matter perfectly. Shortly before the Second World War Churchill had written of him, "He is an artist of distinction whose keen eye and nimble pencil record impression with revealing fidelity”. To those who knew him well, and his friends included many of the masters of 20th century art as well as great figures such as Sir Winston Churchill, the man and his work were a delight. | ||
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