Praise Be to Provence!
The exhibition Louée soit la Provence! was prepared by Bachelor 2 students in Art Market / old master art under the guidance of their professors Luis Belhaouari and David Brouzet. It is part of the 2022/2023 season devoted by IESA arts&culture to Provence and Languedoc. As such, it will be followed from March 21 by a second exhibition, L’Art de Nîmes, organized by the Master 1 students. The latter will support the bid to have the Maison Carrée classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The title of the exhibition, Louée soit la Provence! (Praised Be Provence!), is that of a work published during the Renaissance by a humanist, Quiqueran de Beaujeu, who did not hesitate to compare the beauty and riches of his native Provence to those of Egypt, Greece and Rome! The works on display, from private collections, are all previously unseen. Dating mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries, they reflect the variety and originality of techniques in the field of decorative arts and the importance of its school of painting. All bear witness to an undeniable art and sweetness of living, a taste for fine materials and an innate sense of color.
Among the exhibition’s highlights are an Arlésienne cross that belonged to Frédéric Mistral, a very beautiful walnut chest of drawers generously lent by the Pellat de Villedon gallery and a still life by Meiffren Comte, several of whose paintings are displayed in the Salon de l’Abondance at the Palace of Versailles. The much-appreciated Provençal fabrics are also well represented.
Highly sought after in the 1970s, regional painting, furniture and objets d’art, perhaps less popular today, continue to captivate connoisseurs. As for museums, momentum is building: in 2015, the opening of the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence was a resounding success. In 2016, the Musée des Beaux-arts de Marseille showcased Marseille in the 18th Century in a magnificent exhibition. We might mention the 2021 reopening of the Museon Arlaten, so elegantly renovated by Christian Lacroix, and the 2021 celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Musée d’art et d’Histoire de Provence in Grasse. While awaiting the opening in Arles of a new Fragonard museum dedicated to part of the Costa family collections and the exhibition devoted by the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence to the painter Jean Daret, whose first painting has just entered the Louvre, IESA is donning the finery of this graceful region.
IESA has a partnership with the Early Music Department of the Paris Regional Conservatory, whose students will perform pieces from the Provençal repertoire during the exhibition.
Exhibition at the IESA Gallery
March 8 to 17, 2023
from 14:00 to 18:00.
