Raoul Guiraud - Souk Scene In Morocco

Raoul Louis GUIRAUD Cerbère (Pyrénées-Orientales), 1888 – Béziers, 1976 Oil on panel 47 x 39 cm (55 x 63 cm with frame) Signed and dated lower right “L. R. Guiraud / 1950” Very beautiful Montparnasse frame in carved wood Raoul Guiraud is a naturalist painter with academic training with an impressionist or even pointillist influence. Originally from Béziers, he first studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse (he entered in 1907) with the post-impressionist painter Henri Bonis, then in Paris at the Académie Julian with the Toulouse-born Jean Paul Laurens who he had already met in Toulouse. He also worked with Léon Lhermitte at the Villa des Arts in Montmartre and was influenced in his style by the pointillist Henri Martin. In 1950, he went to Morocco for two years, a few years after the departure of his daughter and the death of his wife in Morocco in 1947. This is a souk scene. We recognize the fine drawing qualities of an artist who also knew how to paint with light. The city of Béziers paid tribute to Raoul Guiraud in 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts with a retrospective exhibition entitled “Raoul Guiraud, A luminist from Béziers”.