1824 -1895 · Nantes, Paris and neo-Greek movement

Sensual antiquity, luminous mythologies and academic elegance place Henri-Pierre Picou among the characteristic figures of the French neo-Greek movement.

Henri-Pierre Picou was born in Nantes in 1824. In Paris, he trained in the workshops of Paul Delaroche then Charles Gleyre, where he met Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Louis Hamon. These young artists share the desire to renew ancient painting: rather than the moral solemnity of neoclassicism, they favor a familiar, colorful, decorative and sometimes sensual Greece. The group soon received the name neo-Greek. Picou began at the Salon of 1847 and obtained a medal the following year with Cleopatra and Antoine on the Cydnus. The group soon received the name neo-Greek. Picou began at the Salon of 1847 and obtained a medal the following year with Cleopatra and Antoine on the Cydnus. The Birth of Pindar, painted in 1848, fully manifested its aesthetic. Around the child poet, the Muses, the pool, the fabrics and precious objects make up a living Antiquity, where erudition serves visual pleasure. In 1853, Jesus chasing the sellers from the Temple earned him the second Grand Prix de Rome. Picou then developed a vast repertoire of mythological, allegorical and religious subjects. Venus, Andromeda, the judgment of Paris or the marine nymphs allowed him to orchestrate the nude, the drape, the water and the landscape in clear compositions. The Birth of Venus associates the appearance of the goddess with pearly light and fluid movement; Andromeda chained to the rock transforms the heroic story into a contrast between fragility of the body and mineral harshness. The painter also receives commissions from religious settings, notably for the Saint-Roch church in Paris, recalling that his mastery is not limited to gallant mythologies. Died in Nantes in 1895, Picou leaves a work where academic discipline is lightened through contact with theater, color and a dreamed Antiquity. The "Henri-Pierre Picou" selection notably compares The Birth of Venus and Marine Nymphs. His reading favors space.

For Picou, Antiquity is not an austere lesson: it becomes a theater of light, water, drapes and bodies where myth finds the seduction of the present.