"Pierre Grivolas (1823-1906) Hamlet Attached To The Rocks"
oil on canvas in very good condition of the leading artist of the school of Avignon Pierre Grivolas. It represents the ruins of a hamlet in a landscape of Vaucluse, certainly around Mont Ventoux that the artist, a specialist in painting on the grounds, regularly walked followed by his students of the Fine Arts of Avignon where he was a teacher. Born in Avignon, in the Rue des Trois-Colombes, on September 2, 1823, he revealed such talent that his parents enrolled him in drawing classes in the city. He obtained, in 1843, the first prize of the Calvet legacy, which allowed him to continue his studies in Paris. Student of the Beaux-Arts, he meets and frequents Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix and Hippolyte Flandrin. In 1848, the Paris riots forced him to return to Avignon where he joined the Félibrige. In 1894, he invited his brother Antoine Grivolas (born in 1843) to leave the Côte d'Azur to join him and settle in the heart of Mont Ventoux in the "Bergerie du Rat" and then at "Combe de Clare" . The two painters lived the same life as the shepherds, sleeping on the straw and feeding on slices of bacon and milk. Having made a set of sketches, sketches and canvases, they moved the following year to settle at Monieux, at the entrance to the Nesque gorge. "For another season, they reach the hamlet of Ventouret and try to reproduce the gray tones of the sun-burned rock, on which rise, in violent hues, the green of the fayards, dominated by the large blue tablecloth sky of these heights. From this fraternal collaboration came works such as Les Amandiers de Verdolier, the picking of lavender, the hamlet of La Gabelle, the Fayards of Ventouret, the Rock of Wax, the Vallon de Monieux. He is considered with his younger brother as one of the major painters of Ventoux. He died in Avignon, February 5, 1906. A street in this city today bears his name. His works are in the following Public Collections: Allauch, Allauch Museum: Procession of communicants, oil on canvas. Arles, Museon Arlaten: Procession of the White Penitents, 1865, oil on canvas; Portrait of Rose Bordas, 1858, 46 × 38cm. Avignon: Calvet Museum Market Place Pie, 1868, oil on canvas, 100 × 150cm; The Flagellants, 1867, oil on canvas, 175 × 208cm. Palace of the Roure: Madame de Séménov, 190 × 128cm; Father of Mr Nicolas de Séménov, 71 × 58cm; Mother of Mr Nicolas de Séménov, 70 × 58cm; Portrait of Pierre Sautel, 1898, 56 × 42cm; Self-portrait, 40 × 30cm. Louis Vouland Museum: Interior of a spinning mill, 1858, 93 × 73cm; Portrait of Madame Irma de Fontnouvelle, oil on canvas; Portrait of Charles Thomas, oil on canvas. Small price for the one who was the teacher of the greatest Provençal artists like René Seyssaud, Auguste Chabaud etc ... The work which is signed lower left is proposed without frame, but I can take care of framing it.