MAILLAUD Fernand (1862-1948). "The oxen". Oil... Lot 64

MAILLAUD Fernand (1862-1948). "The oxen". Oil on canvas signed lower right. Dim. 47.5 x 56 cm. Framed. From 1895 to 1902, Fernand Maillaud spent summers at Fresselines, near Crozant. He befriended Maurice Rollinat and met Allan Österlind, Jean Geffroy, Armand Dayot, Lucien Descaves and the young Bernard Naudin. In Rollinat, he found an invaluable ally in his fight for recognition of the authenticity of the rural world. For Maillaud, it was a time of church interiors, funeral convoys, holy families and peasants bent under faggots. Through Rollinat's connections, Maillaud entered the circle of Ferdinand Humbert, an influential painter of the period. The master, "enthused by Maillaud's good-natured modernism and reassured by his respectable subjects", obtained state commissions for him. Ref. Christophe RAmeix "l'école de Crozant", ed. Lucien Souny 1991 and reed. 2002.