Emile Chaumont (1877-1927) Church Of Tayac Eyzies Dordogne Périgord

Emile CHAUMONT
(Périgueux 1877 - 1927)
Tayac and his church
Oil on cardboard
H. 46 cm; L. 61 cm
Signed lower right and located

The Saint-Georges district of Périgueux was the cradle and the place of life of this poetic painter. After beginning of classical studies, he had to leave high school on the death of his parents to go to a remunerative profession. His older brother and tutor, knowing his pronounced taste for drawing, allowed him to learn lithography at the Dupont printing house. He greatly appreciated this choice and evolved in his native town until he became a master craftsman of the Ronteix house. Mobilized for the entire war from 1915, Emile Chaumont distinguished himself by "his remarkable attitude of energy and enthusiasm" by returning from the front with the Croix de Guerre. It was on his return that he made the decision to join Bordeaux and the Pech printing press. Certainly a painter before, it was really at this time that he devoted himself to his passion during all his free hours. A pupil of Périgord Léon Félix and of Professor Albert Laurens whose inspiration we feel, it is however under his own ideas that Chaumont made his art evolve. He followed Jean-Louis Daniel in Corrèze, crisscrossed the Périgord, but also the Gironde Landes. His always luminous landscapes borrowing a complete range of colors were a real success and were even crowned with an honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Français. Apart from these landscapes, Emile Chaumont produced many staged portraits and still lifes, of remarkable quality. He died at only fifty years old in the Saint-Georges district where he was born, in the home of his brother Léopold Chaumont, director of the newspaper l'Avenir de la Dordogne, after long suffering from an incurable disease. The city of Périgueux devoted a posthumous exhibition to him, which was acclaimed by critics in 1946, and offered his native district a street in the name of the artist.

If the village of Les Eyzies and the valley of the Vézère are world famous, the small village of origin, located away from the tourist routes, is a great forgotten of the Périgord Noir. And yet it is not devoid of history and even less charm, as this oil from Emile Chaumont demonstrates wonderfully. Surrounded by small houses with steeply sloping roofs and covered with slate and flat tiles, the 12th century fortified church is under the name of Saint Martin. Here we see its wall is crowned with a turret and a linear walkway. To the west, above the portal is the same type of wall, receiving the bells, also placed under a walkway. This blond stone vessel protecting the town is covered with a spectacular slate roof. In this composition, between the walls stands out the famous cliff of the Grand Roc overlooking the Vézère.