Banyuls' First Citizen

In a corner of the Manhattan offices occupied by the French Consulate is the Pierre Matisse Gallery, a showroom run by the suave young son of the great French painter, Henri Matisse. Last week this gallery had something of major importance to show to importers, passport vise seekers, messenger boys and visiting celebrities: an exhibition of drawings by Aristide Maillol whom France ranks, with Antoine Bourdelle, as one of the two greatest living sculptors.

To a Parisian, Banyuls is the name of a heavy dessert wine, artificially colored scarlet and spiked with quinine, which rivals Byrrh and Dubonnet as an aperitif. It is pressed among the bare hills of a French Catalan fishing village 30 mi. from the Spanish border. In Banyuls 71 years ago Aristide Maillol was born, there he still spends his winters. His grandfather was a huge peasant of tremendous physical strength who was actively engaged in Banyuls' third most important industry, smuggling. Smuggler Maillol was successful enough to indulge his grandson's taste for art, though young Aristide Maillol's first medium was one that must have caused many an old smuggler to raise an eyebrow. He designed tapestries.

From needlework Aristide Maillol turned to painting, studied under Cabanel at the Beaux Arts in Paris. For ten years he slaved over an easel with remarkably little success. When he was middleaged, he carved one day a nude figure in wood. It seemed the most satisfactory work he had ever done, and from then on Aristide Maillol was a sculptor. Recognition came first from Germany where, just before the War, his calm, placid nudes were hailed with delight as 'the essence of Greece."

Now 71, with brilliant blue eyes and a shaggy Michelangelesque beard, he is still nearly as strong as his famed grandfather. He moves his casts about his studio himself.

Aristide Maillol is not interested in character. Like Renoir, he loves the human body for itself. His calm impressive figures are almost expressionless; so too is his latest model, a strapping Greek beauty of such vast placidity that the Matisses, father & son, found it almost impossible to carry on even the simplest conversation with her. What Pierre Matisse had to exhibit last week were 19 drawings of the lady from various angles. Preliminary studies for sculpture, far more finished than most sculptors' sketches, they were priced from $500 to $700.

Ever since he used to dye his own tapes try woolens, Aristide Maillol has been very particular about his materials. He used to complain violently about every type of drawing paper on the market. Several years ago he chewed a big gob of drawing paper while working on a clay model and finally spat it out on the smooth tile floor. Some hours later he picked it up, discovered that the underside of his paper quid had acquired a beautiful fine grain. Faithful Nephew Caspar Maillol undertook to manufacture drawing paper for his uncle and friends by a like process. It is expensive, not on the public market. The only other drawing paper that Aristide Maillol finds fit to use is the very cheap soft yellow wrapping paper that the butcher of Banyuls uses for his meat.

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