Son of farmers from the Aude, Achille Laugé grew up in the town of Cailhau. Probably forced by his parents, the young man followed a course of pharmacy studies that led him to Carcassonne, a dynamic city in which he attended the School of Fine Arts. Between 1876 and 1881, he met there promising young artists, including Antoine Bourdelle, with whom he formed a deep friendship. His innate gift for artistic practice pushed him to abandon his scientific studies in favour of drawing. By moving to Paris, he gained access to the School of Fine Arts, and continued and completed his training alongside Aristide Maillol.
At the Salon des Indépendants of 1886 in Paris, Laugé was deeply marked by the discovery of Georges Seurat’s manifesto painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This decisive encounter durably oriented his pictorial research.
After seven years immersed in the rich cultural and artistic life of the capital, he chose to return to his native Languedoc, in search of calm and light—two elements he would henceforth strive to transpose onto the canvas. He embraced the principles of Neo-Impressionism and adopted the technique of divided pure colour.
Solitude then became the driving force of his creation. Laugé set up a “studio-wagon” (ill. 1) that allowed him to roam the roads while drawing and painting from life in any weather. Like many of his contemporaries, the artist explored the notion of series, tirelessly depicting the roads of Cailhau. This repetition allowed him to confront the exercise of reality, and to render without artifice what the eye perceives. In these carefully constructed landscapes, he endeavoured to capture the subtle variations of light and the passing of the seasons, in their most delicate nuances.
It is in Cailhau that Laugé deployed, through his brushes and pencils, a vision of calm and serenity embodied by trees—symbols of life itself, indifferent to human torments (ill. 2). In the zenithal fullness of a summer day, an almond tree in bloom stands at the centre of the composition. Majestic, it occupies most of the sheet. Its fine and slender branches seem to want to reach the sky, while its roots, solidly anchored in the earth, give it a proud and peaceful presence.
The artist reveals himself as a master in the art of illuminating the silence and immobility of nature. Alone before the dazzling southern light, he expresses a deep sense of tranquillity. His acute sense of composition, of rigorous geometry, reveals a marked taste for emptiness. From his work emerges a harmony between light, space, and matter.
This blossoming of Neo-Impressionism finds full expression in these landscapes, of which our sheet is an excellent example. In this delicate vision of a tree that seems crushed by the heat, the use of pastel allows him to render vibrating elements, including the sky, made of a very pure blue. The delicacy of the tones recalls the sensitivity of this master of the divisionist touch, enhanced by the ingenious use of the paper left in reserve in the lower part to suggest the natural colour of the earth.
Laugé was an accomplished artist, entirely devoted to his work, but had to face the refusal of his parents, opposed to his choice of career and determined not to support him. In these difficult times, Laugé had to finance his own materials, including his colours. Ingenious and determined, he circumvented this obstacle by making his own pigments from vegetal elements, crushing or grinding blackberries and wild garlic. Although he exchanged paint recipes with Bourdelle, the yellow shade, an essential primary colour for his work, resisted him: he was never able to recreate it to his satisfaction and was forced to save money to obtain it.
The southern painter passed away in 1944, after having worked tirelessly, preserving the originality of his palette and the freedom of an always vibrant touch.
We thank Madame Nicole Tamburini, specialist of the artist, for confirming the authenticity of our pastel, which will be included in the catalogue raisonné in preparation on the artist.
M.O
