An absolutely beautiful and apparently completely unique vellum custom volume containing 20 original paintings by influential French and American modernist painter, Andrew Girard [1901-1968].
Girard attended the École des Beaux-Arts at Saint-Cyr. While there he studied under, and became life-long friends, with both Georges Rouault and Pierre Bonnard.
His earliest successes took place in the early 1930’s as a theatre and public arts designer in Paris. Using the finances from his design work, he established a painting studio first in Venice [1936–37], and then in Manhattan in 1938.
Still holding French citizenship, but also the father of four daughters, Girard was not called up for service by the French Military in the crisis of 1939. Still, he was French. Incensed by the Germans’ push toward Paris, he returned to France voluntarily [1940] and there founded the CARTE French Resistance network.
Largely apolitical, the movement was at first solely interested in reclaiming France through the recruitment of spies and preparing the populace for an uprising against Germany. This was all done without the official sanction or support of the French Government. But his efforts were so successful, he aroused the interest of the Special Operations Executive. They visited, evaluated his work, and began supplying him with arms, radio operators, and money.
In 1943 Girard was asked to merge CARTE with another similar operation, COMBAT. But he felt COMBAT was too much in line with Gaullism and refused. As a result, he was blacklisted. On February 20, 1943, he flew to England on what he thought were SOE orders, but was refused re-entrance to France by the same. The continued to refuse him even after his wife was arrested by the Nazis and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp.
He fled England and went into self-imposed exile in the United States of America.
Already successful both as a painter and as a commercial artist, once in New York he found work in medium new to him, but of deep personal importance. The sufferings of the war had called him back to the faith of his childhood. From the late 1940's onward he seems to have taken commissions almost exclusively for work in churches, including beautiful modernist paintings and stained glass. He produced several cycles of the Stations of the Cross and the Apocalypse in large format oil and glass for churches in New York, Vermont, and California [Palo Alto].
The present volume, likely produced around the same time as his stained glass cycles [1952] is a charming, historically important, and ambitious production. Written in English, it contains excerpts of letters from George Roualt, the French Philosopher Jacques Maritain, Father John LaFarge, French Poet Andre Suares and others commenting on the deeply spiritual nature of Girard’s painterly and design work.
The volume is bound in vellum wraps, which are hand-painted by Girard. It then contains 32pp, over 20 of which are hand-painted in watercolor and gouache. The work is designed it seems to demonstrate the history of Girard’s development and life as an artist, with the beginning displaying the French countryside and ports, then moving to scenes of Venice, and on to his religious works.
Many of the works are painted over pale gray lithographed sketches, though seemingly not all. We imagine the work is probably a prototype, not completely finished, and we trace no other examples. A handful of lithographed pages remain unpainted, and a few were not brought to completion. We trace 20 completed paintings in the volume. Clearly his heart was in the Venice images and the stained-glass images. They are absolutely glorious.
Two similarly constructed individual works [though larger] have appeared at auction. A stained-glass design was offered [and sold] with an estimate of $1,000 - $1,500 [Myers, Saint Petersburg]. And an allegorical work in this style was offered [and sold] at $2,500 - $3,500 [Doyle, New York].
https://artistinwar.wordpress.com/ contains a very good description of the effects of the Second World War and Andre’s wife’s imprisonment on his shift toward Christo-centric painting.
Disbound, but complete. Pages and colors clean and bright.