Background
Charles Maurin was born on April 1, 1856, in Le Puy-en-Velay, France.
Charles Maurin was born on April 1, 1856, in Le Puy-en-Velay, France.
Having won the art scholarship known as the Prix Crozatier in 1875, Charles Maurin entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, studying with Jules Lefèbvre and Gustave Boulanger from 1876 to 1879, and with Rodolphe Julian at the Académie Julian.
Charles first exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1882, where he showed a pair of portraits, one of which gained an honourable mention. Then he continued to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Français until 1890. Maurin participated in the Salon des Indépendants for the first time in 1887, showing a number of paintings, drawings and engravings that were admired by, among others, Edgar Degas. As an artist, he worked in a variety of styles, the most distinctive being a sort of Symbolism evident in a range of allegorical subjects that he treated.
Maurin had a lifelong interest in the depiction of the female nude, and, like Degas and Mary Cassatt, was fond of portraying women at intimate moments of their daily routine. He also produced a handful of splendid portraits, mainly in the 1880s and 1890s, of friends, patrons and fellow artists including Georges Seurat and Rupert Carabin, as well as drawings and pastels of café, theatre and street scenes. Around 1885 he took up an appointment as a professor at the Académie Julian, where he met Félix Vallotton, who became a close friend. Another good friend was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, with whom Maurin shared an exhibition in 1893 at the Galerie Boussod et Valadon in Paris. It was there that, at the urging of Degas, the collector Henry Laurent began to acquire Maurin’s work, eventually becoming his foremost patron and collector.
The 1890s found Maurin enjoying a moderately successful career, with one-man shows with Ambroise Vollard in 1895 and at Edmond Sagot in 1899. He received a commission from the State for a painting of "Maternité"; completed in 1893 and sent to the museum in his native town of Le Puy, the painting was soon regarded as one of the artist’s finest works. The previous year he took part in the inaugural Salon de la Rose + Croix, where he showed one of his largest and most important paintings; a monumental triptych entitled "L’Aurore." He also contributed works to the Salons de la Rose + Croix of 1895 and 1897. Maurin painted a series of large decorative panels of "Tragedy, Dance and Music" for the foyer of the municipal theatre in Le Puy in 1893, and for Sarah Bernhardt designed sets and costumes for Edmond Rostand’s "La Princess Lointaine" in 1895. He visited Holland, Belgium and England, and sent works to Le Libre Esthétique in Brussels in 1896 and 1897, and the Exhibition of International Art in London in 1898. A man of firm anarchist leanings, Maurin produced illustrations for the radical journal Le Temps nouveau, and published portrait prints of the French anarchists Louise Michel and François Koenigstein, known as Ravachol. In 1895 he was also commissioned to provide illustrations for the art and literary journal La Revue Blanche.
After 1900, however, Maurin’s output declined considerably, partly due to ill health, and the last years of his life were spent in Brittany and Provence, where he died in obscurity in 1914. His work was largely forgotten after his death, although a retrospective exhibition was held at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris in 1921, while a monograph on his work by Ulysse Rouchon was published the following year. Although a significant collection of Maurin’s work is today in the collection of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay, his paintings and drawings remain little represented in museums outside France.
Maternity
Nude Woman combing her Hair
La Petite Toilette
Mere et enfant
Le ruban de coiffure
Portrait de François-Rupert Carabin
A Girl With Her Guardian Angel
On the Potty
Bathroom
Self-Portrait
Female Nude
Jeune Femme Au Chat
Footbath
The Dawn of of the Dream, or Les Fleurs du Mal
Composition allégorique
Ravachol
The Kiss
An innovative artist, Charles invented a method of using an atomizer to spray pigment onto the surface of the paper to create what he termed "peintures au vaporisateur"; large, atmospheric watercolour landscapes of great subtlety and beauty.
Maurin became a member of the Society of French Artists in 1883.
