ROGER GRILLON

Biography

Maurice Roger Grillon, born in Poitiers on September 28, 1881 and died in Maule on June 19, 1938, was a French painter, illustrator and wood engraver. He is the son of Albert-Fulgence Grillon, painter and lithographer in Poitiers.

After a childhood spent in his father's lithography studio, in 1900 he came to follow the Beaux-Arts courses in Paris in Fernand Cormon's studio. There he became friend with Matisse and Marquet, and in 1904 began to send nudes and portraits to the Salon des Artistes Français, women in their boudoir, landscapes at dusk and still lifes dimmed in half-light, but he quickly gave up this salon, preferring to exhibit his work at the Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. At the dawn of this century, Grillon felt the temptations of the Impressionism, and in a traditional, if not conventional, setting, placed the women à la Renoir, with vibrant flesh under the sun. Soon the impressionist liberties prevail, the blue shadows and the games of shimmering reflections gain his landscapes; he even confronted divisionism but did not abandon the down-to-earth realism that dominates his work, and from which he draws the deepest roots in southern nature. In 1926, the Parisian gallery Berthe Weill devoted a personal exhibition to him. He successively settled to paint near Albi, in Collioure, in Saint-Paul de Vence, then in Roussillon in Prades and in the Corbières, in Lagrasse, which became his chosen land. He illustrates with woodcuts or etchings works by Paul Morand, Montherlant, Mauriac, Delteil.