Octave MORILLOT (1878-1931). The Oranges. Mixed... Lot 62

Octave MORILLOT (1878-1931). The Oranges. Mixed technique on paper mounted on canvas, signed with the stamp "OM", located in "Tiva" and dated November 1912. Height : 90 cm 90 - 49 cm long (very slight lifting, two small jumps of paint) Exhibition: Galerie Barbazanges, presented in the catalog of the exhibition "Octave Morillot" in 1922, series B (1907-1914), under the number B14 and titled "Les Oranges". Bibliography : Norbert MURIE, "Octave Morillot, Peintre de la Polynésie", ACR Edition, 2005, reproduced p. 134 under number 54. Son of a deputy and naval officer, Octave Morillot was sent to the Pacific in 1901. A completely self-taught artist, he became friends with the writers Victor Segalen and Claude Farrère who noticed his talent as a draughtsman and encouraged him in his practice. Leaving his position as an officer to sink into artificial paradises - he died of opium abuse - he never gave up painting. When his father died, he used his inheritance to buy a plantation on the island of Tahaa where our painting was done. Influenced by the colors of Gauguin, he exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1922, the year in which the French State acquired one of his works for the Orangerie. Exhibited at Orsay, the Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and the Musée du Luxembourg, he remains a cursed artist in a corner of paradise. Our work illustrates the work of a prodigious colorist, an eden of sensuality and exostime explored with brushstrokes. One can almost hear in it what Morillot liked to say, "In Tahiti, and in Tahiti alone, I felt that precious emotion of art, that spark from which comes courage, conviction."