Charles Balay

CHARLES BALAY (Saint-Etienne, 1861-Lyon, 1943)
"L'Orangerie".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
With original exhibition label (Paris, 1934) on the back.
Measurements: 56 x 73 cm; 67 x 85 cm (frame).

Charles Balay offers us a silent vision of the landscaped architecture, where the interest does not reside so much in the monumentality of the motive as in the atmosphere that surrounds it. The facade, articulated by a succession of windows and pilasters, becomes the compositional axis of the work, treated with intimate sensitivity.

The filtered light bathes the surface in a range of warm, powdered tones that evoke the passage of time and give the whole a melancholic quality.

Charles Balay was a student of Luc-Olivier Merson and Theobald Chartran and a member of the Society of French Artists, where he won a silver medal in 1923 and a gold medal in 1928. In the 1930s he exhibited at the Palais des Champs-Élysées and the Parisian Salons.