Élisée Maclet

Church in the Square

Élisée Maclet was born the son of a gardener and a laundress in Picardy. His family was poor and he began work very young as an assistant to his father. Picardy is renowned for its roses, and Maclet used to say that he was born among cabbages and roses. His artistic talent became evident very early on. In spite of paternal opposition, in 1906 Maclet gave up gardening for art and moved to Montmartre, where while painting he supported himself with a variety of casual work (varnishing iron bedsteads, decorating the floats for the gala nights at the Moulin Rouge, washing dishes or opening oysters in restaurants). In a short time Maclet won a circle of admirers. The art dealer, Dosbourg, bought his work, which gave him a fairly reliable source of income and enabled him to devote more time than ever to his art. From Montmartre he launched out into the suburbs of Paris, painting them with the same affection with which he treated the scenes of Montmartre. In 1923 Maclet entered into a contract with a wealthy Austrian manufacturer, Baron von Frey, a condition of which was that he should leave Paris for the south of France, as the Baron sensed that Maclet would know how to handle the brilliant light and intense colours of the Midi. When he made sporadic visits to Paris during his years in the south of France, the painters of Montmartre and Montparnasse considered him a painter on the rise, but the public remained indifferent. In 1957 a Parisian gallery organized a retrospective exhibition of Maclet's work, and the solid rise in the prices of his paintings dates from that retrospective exhibition. The artist had reached the state wherein his work was soundly established across the years.