Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres

(1880-1958)

Two Women Arranging Flowers in The Interior

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Jop Ubbens, co-author of Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès, 1880-1958: Painter-Traveller. This work will be included in the Le Mayeur Archive (LMA).

Provenance
Artist Studio, Bali
Acquired directly from the above in the early to mid-1950s
Private Collection of Isaac van Bueren, Netherlands
Private Collection, Dublin, Ireland (by descent from the above)

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You will understand my paintings wherever you may see them. For everything in this little paradise which I created for myself was made to be painted.

—Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

This is an intimate painting of Le Mayeur's home, his inner sanctum. There can be no doubt whatsoever of the artist's deep love for his "little paradise" and his home, Bali—the Island of the Gods. Known for his poetic depictions of traditional Balinese way of life, Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès remains one of the most celebrated and famous foreign artists who settled in Indonesia.

Born in 1880 to an aristocratic Belgian family, Le Mayeur travelled the world in search of light and beauty. He travelled through Venice, India, Istanbul, Madagascar, and Tahiti, finally arriving in Bali in 1932 and deciding to settle there at the age of 52. He had fallen in love with the island, the people, and culture; more importantly, he had met and was to marry his muse, the famous legong dancer Ni Pollok. Instantly inspired, he "put himself to work immediately", dedicating the remainder of his life to capturing the beauty of his adopted home and allowing nothing to distract him.

Le Mayeur's first exhibition in Asia was held at the YMCA Singapore between February and March 1933. A review of the exhibition from The Straits Time reads:

Mr. A.J. Le Mayeur ...has succeeded in drenching the YMCA with sunlight in an exhibition of his paintings which opens today for a week ...and after eight months amidst these naturally artistic people, he could not help but bring away canvas after canvas flooded with the warmth of this sun-kissed corner of the globe...That he has done so with such rich touch...take his easel out into the light and air rather than to work in a studio, his work, if it were possible, exhales the rich breadth of the tropical exterior. He finds stunning colour in the shadows.

Only a handful of interior scenes by the artist exist—making them extremely rare and desirable. Viewing the work is akin to being welcomed by the artist and his wife in their home. As we enter, we see the warm surroundings decorated with jewelled treasures and filled with images-within-images; paintings that include representations of other painted or sculpted objects.

Le Mayeur was gifted at discovering and distilling "beautiful colour in the shadows". Even within this shaded inner sanctum filled with beauty, art, and knowledge, the artist still spins sunlight and colour from his brush. The perspective draws the eye to two female figures (Ni Pollok replicated) as they lean towards each other, arranging a bouquet of tropical garden flowers on a low table. Sunlight bounces off the windowsill, bathing the figures in a golden hue contrasting with the room's deep burgundy and luscious reds. True to his credo of being an impressionist, Le Mayeur writes in a letter dated 1947 a very pointed description of how he paints interior scenes:

I put my easel in the hut; a sunbeam penetrates the window, caressing Pollok's shoulders while she is arranging flowers on the table —Letter nr. 19, Bali, 10 April 1947

While subject, light, and colour are quintessentially Balinese in spirit, Le Mayeur's painterly brushwork has its foundations in impressionist spontaneity. Disciplined symmetry and perspective hark back to his Belgian and Dutch predecessors. Vermeer always sets the tiles of his scenes diagonally to the picture plane to intensify the illusion of spatial depth, showcasing the artist's command of perspective and creating a balanced grid to illustrate richly decorated environments. The red-tiled floor of this traditional Balinese house or Joglo is painted similarly, with the window on the left as a source of light. Bali's national flower, the plumeria, is scattered like offerings on the tiles in the foreground before the two kneeling ladies. A traditional woven rattan basket containing brightly coloured flowers lies on the floor. Added to this sense of intoxicating fecundity are perfumed blossoms suspended from intricately carved golden beams. All our senses are heightened and awakened.

The original wooden frame, fashioned by Le Mayeur's in-house carpenter, adds to the trompe-l'œil effect of being inside the room and within the picture space. The carved floral motifs of the frame depicting lotus flowers in full bloom resonate with the finely carved pillars and beams of the painted Joglo. The present work masterfully displays the intimate setting of the artist's home, which today is preserved as a State Museum featuring about 100 of his works, donated to Indonesia by Le Mayeur and Ni Pollok. Two Women Arranging Flowers in the Interior has been with the same family since it was acquired directly from Ni Pollok and Le Mayeur by Isaac Van Bueren while he was living in Batavia in the mid-1940s to the early 1950s.