1944, Jacques Villon (Gaston Duchamps), The Three Orders: The Castle, The Church, The Land -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: When tensions escalated between French and German troops at the beginning of World War II, Villon left Paris for Beaugency on the banks of the Loire River. During his year-long seclusion in the little town, he made a series of etchings depicting the region's medieval monuments. One of these captured a view of Dunois Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame situated in the vast expanse of the Loire Valley. This bird's-eye perspective from Beaugency's bell tower allowed Villon to depict the interrelation between the emphatic rectilinear contours of the fields and the Romanesque architecture, recalling his earlier forays into Cubism and nonfigurative abstraction. Villon did not complete the definitive version of his composition until several months after the liberation of Paris in 1944. The landscape painting flaunts an intense palette that verges on a Fauvist audacity while remaining grounded in its motif. The careful ordering of its figurative elements and tonal relationships directly reflects the incitement of a return to the traditional social organization and values of France evoked by the painting's title. A patriotic allegory of the united classes of nobility, clergy, and common people painted at the time of the country's liberation from fascism, The Three Orders was enthusiastically acclaimed when first exhibited in Paris a few months after its completion.
1944, Jacques Villon (Gaston Duchamps), The Three Orders: The Castle, The Church, The Land -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: When tensions escalated between French and German troops at the beginning of World War II, Villon left Paris for Beaugency on the banks of the Loire River. During his year-long seclusion in the little town, he made a series of etchings depicting the region's medieval monuments. One of these captured a view of Dunois Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame situated in the vast expanse of the Loire Valley. This bird's-eye perspective from Beaugency's bell tower allowed Villon to depict the interrelation between the emphatic rectilinear contours of the fields and the Romanesque architecture, recalling his earlier forays into Cubism and nonfigurative abstraction. Villon did not complete the definitive version of his composition until several months after the liberation of Paris in 1944. The landscape painting flaunts an intense palette that verges on a Fauvist audacity while remaining grounded in its motif. The careful ordering of its figurative elements and tonal relationships directly reflects the incitement of a return to the traditional social organization and values of France evoked by the painting's title. A patriotic allegory of the united classes of nobility, clergy, and common people painted at the time of the country's liberation from fascism, The Three Orders was enthusiastically acclaimed when first exhibited in Paris a few months after its completion.