Provence Landscape with Trees

Oil on Panel

10” x 12” unframed

19.5” x 21.5” framed

Signed Lower right with initials

Verso Wally Findlay Gallery label

Provenance:

New Jersey Estate Tower Hill Farms, Red Bank

Wally Findlay Gallery

Biography:

Maxime Boulard de Villeneuve was born on March 12, 1883, in the 8th district of Paris. He was the only son of Maurice Boulard de Villeneuve (1856-1918) and Marguerite Chesnard, who died in childbirth. Maurice Boulard de Villeneuve remarried, and Maxime had a half-brother and a half-sister from his father’s new union. Maxime Boulard de Villeneuve married Georgette Martin, a painter like him, in 1914.  As a young man in his native Paris, Maxime Boulard de Villeneuve was caught up in the revolutionary artistic movements of the time. In 1901, he moved to Montmartre, where he rented a studio with his friend Francis Picabia.

He was influenced by the Fauves for a few years before he claimed his style. Maxime Boulard de Villeneuve explored everyday subjects and painted his surroundings. After forays into Fauvism and Cubism in the early 1900s, he was influenced by Pierre Bonnard.  He loved to wander through all the provinces of France, and paint ports, village squares, terraced gardens, and country lanes. Locations including Choisel, Nice, Antibes, Saint Bazile, Biot, Villefranche, and Vence were depicted many times by the painter, both in his early works and in his later works.

From 1922 to 1939, he exhibited landscapes and portraits at the Paris Salon. In 1926, he presented two landscapes of Montmorency at the Salon des Indépendants.  In 1929, he attracted attention by exhibiting landscapes of Enghien, Montmorency, Deuil, Groslay, Villefranche and Nice at the Galerie J. Allard in Paris.  His quest for a poetic atmosphere led him to the south of France, where he lived most of his life.  After his death on November 17, 1971, in Nice, the American gallery Wally Findlay bought a large part of his works during the sale of his studio, and in 1975, in Palm Beach, Florida, organized a retrospective exhibition of the painter.