Important Notice

Born in Paris in 1898, André Maire showed exceptional talent as a draughtsman from an early age. He enrolled at the municipal drawing school on the Place des Vosges in 1909 and was later mentored by French Post-Impressionist painter Émile Bernard who introduced him to different techniques and guided him in his artistic choices. After completing his military service in Indochina, he travelled extensively across Spain in the 1920s and Egypt and... Born in Paris in 1898, André Maire showed exceptional talent as a draughtsman from an early age. He enrolled at the municipal drawing school on the Place des Vosges in 1909 and was later mentored by French Post-Impressionist painter Émile Bernard who introduced him to different techniques and guided him in his artistic choices. After completing his military service in Indochina, he travelled extensively across Spain in the 1920s and Egypt and India in the 1930s. The landscapes and different cultures he encountered during his travels fascinated him and formed the subject of many of his works.

With the help of patronage from the Comtesse de Jumilhac, Maire spent months travelling across India in 1938, and documented the sights he witnessed in his art. The present lot is one of several large compositions the artist painted in Madurai. The monumentality of the sacred elephants is matched by the majestic towers of the Meenakshi temple. “Though highly committed to the realistic representation of ancestral architecture, he varied his compositions, deliberately placing the site in natural surroundings when it was actually in the middle of the city, sometimes retaining one tower, sometimes the other. But the elephants always remained, the sublime subjects of his creations in Asia, for their imposing physique and powerful symbolism truly spoke to the painter.” (“The Painter André Maire Discovers India,” La Gazette Drouot, 22 September 2022, online) The ornamentality of the work alludes to the artist’s early career when he painted theatre sets and panoramas.

The work is also an exemplary example of Maire’s distinctive style that he first developed in 1928 during his time in Andalusia. His oil technique was inspired by sepias and accompanied by precise drawing strokes that stand out against a brown monochrome background that acquired an orange tone in India.

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