THE RESEARCH GRANTS

 Pierre-Victor Galland (1822-1892), painter and decorator, by Jeremy Cerrano
Second Empire Research Grant 2003

Born in Switzerland into a family of goldsmiths, Pierre-Victor Galland followed in his family's footsteps, before taking up an artistic career. He initially signed up to become an architect at the atelier of Henri Labrouste, later joining that of the painter Drolling where he met Besnard, Chaplin and Paul Baudry. He then entered the workshop of the great theatre decorator, Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri. And it was here that he made the acquaintance of Diéterle, Séchan and Cambon with whom he was to collaborate in his large national manufactories.

Using his social connections, he became the darling painter of the certain financiers (Rothschild, Erlanger, André), certain rich industrialists (Cail, Grandval, Darier, Scherer…) and certain non-French aristocrats (Baron Paul Georgevitch Von Derwies, Prince Narischkine in Saint-Petersburg, the Marquis de Guadalcazar in Madrid).

In 1849 he collaborated with Labrouste in the organisation of the public ceremonies which took place during the return of Napoleon's corpse to Paris. […] In 1855 he participated in the decoration of the palace of Saint-Cloud, producing a ceiling representing the arts and two door decorations (poetry and literature), commissions from the Minister of State and of the Emperor's household, Achille Fould. The latter was to commission a portrait of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie in 1853.

Unfortunately, many of Galland works, such as the decoration of the town mansion belonging to Achille Fould's brother, Louis Fould, were to be destroyed at the coming to power of the Third Republic, notably burnt during the Commune.

The portraits of the Emperor and Empress are known thanks to the tapestry cartoons from the Musée de Versailles which are currently deposited at Compiègne - in fact, Galland was highly reputed during the Second Empire as much as a painter as a tapestry weaver. He was to make a tapestry for the Empress for her Elysée salon, and he was also to do work for the Louvre through which he glorified the political system, a genre dear to heart of all dynasties […].

There are several reasons why the enormous output of so famous a painter in his time as Galland's has been forgotten. Firstly he was a painter/decorator. Trained in the academic style, he never obtained a Grand Prix de Rome just like Paul Baudry, one of his comrades in Drolling's atelier. Out of necessity, he was forced to start work young and to find a career which paid: namely, theatre/opera decor followed by the decoration of private town mansions […]. He never attracted the attention of critics since he never did exhibitions, always busy as he was with painting. And he worked most often for wealthy individuals whose collections were often inaccessible. […]

But Galland's work travelled beyond France to the USA where he worked with Paul Baudry for the financier Vanderbilt (1880) and for the press magnate Whitelaw-Reid (1890), who was to become American ambassador in France.

The history of the art of the 19th century has forgotten Pierre-Victor Galland because his art was known only to an elite. This study will make it possible to evaluate the real influence of this painter upon French decorative arts.

(J.C. trans. P.H.)