Maurice Pillard Verneuil (29 April 1869 – 21 September 1942) was a French artist and decorator in the

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

movement.

Biography

He was born in

Saint-Quentin, France Saint-Quentin (; ; ) is a city in the Aisne department, Hauts-de-France, northern France. It has been identified as the ''Augusta Veromanduorum'' of antiquity. It is named after Saint Quentin of Amiens, who is said to have been martyred ther ...

. Maurice Pillard Verneuil learned his trade from the Swiss designer

Eugène Grasset Eugène Samuel Grasset (; 25 May 1845 – 23 October 1917) was a Swiss decorative artist who worked in Paris, France in a variety of creative design fields during the Belle Époque. He is considered a pioneer in Art Nouveau design. Biography ...

. Maurice Pillard Verneuil then went on to become a well-known

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

. He was inspired by Japanese art and nature, particularly the sea. He is known for his contribution to the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

movement and, in particular, his use of bold, floral designs in

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

tiles Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, walls, edges, or ot ...

wallpapers Wallpaper is used in interior decoration to cover the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" to help cover uneve ...

and other furnishing

textiles Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

. His designs covered both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods subsequently transitioning into his much acclaimed geometric patterns. Verneuil also produced numerous poster works in France alongside the well-known artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Chéret. Other collaborators included

Armand Point Armand Point (23 March 1860"Point, Armand." ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford Art Online'', Oxford University Press. Retrieved 20 June 2014. or 23 March 1861"Point, Armand." Colette E. Bidon, ''Grove Art on Line, Oxford Art Online'', Oxford ...

, René Juste,

Alfons Mucha Alfons Maria Mucha (; 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist. Living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, he was widely known for his distinctly stylized ...

and

Mathurin Méheut Mathurin Méheut (21 May 1882 – 22 February 1958) was a French painter, ceramist, engraver, and etcher best known for his depictions of Breton scenes, the sea, and nature. Méheut was born into a family of artisans in Lamballe, Brittany, and ap ...

. After the First World War, he moved to Geneva, and then, from 1921 to his death to Rivaz where he lived with his third wife, Adélaïde Verneuil de Marval, who was also a painter and the photomodel he used for his portfolio, "Images d'une femme", in the 1930s. In 1925, Maurice Pillard Verneuil and his wife worked together on the portfolio ''Kaleidoscope: Ornements abstraits, quatre-vingt-sept motifs en vingt planches. Composés par Ad.(élaïde) and M.P.Verneuil.'' He trained many artists including

Amédée Ozenfant Amédée Ozenfant (15 April 1886 – 4 May 1966) was a French cubist painter and writer. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier) he founded the Purist movement. Education Ozenfant was born into a bourgeois ...

. In 1923, he embarked with his wife Adélaïde Verneuil de Marval on a long voyage to the Far East, including visits to Cambodia, Indonesia, and Japan.

References

External links

Art Deco artists 1942 deaths 1869 births Art Nouveau designers French designers People from Saint-Quentin, Aisne {{art-hist-stub