Écureuils 1897

Curator: "Écureuils", or "Squirrels", is a watercolor created in 1897 by Maurice Pillard Verneuil. It’s a beautiful example of the Art Nouveau movement. Editor: Immediately, I'm struck by the vibrant, almost playful quality of this watercolor. There’s a sense of lightness and movement, even mischief, in these squirrels. It’s not your typical woodland scene, is it? Curator: Indeed, it leans heavily on the illustrative and decorative, key characteristics of Art Nouveau. Look at the stylized forms—the almost symmetrical arrangement of the squirrels, the patterned foliage, and the way the negative space is treated. Verneuil, associated with L'Art Nouveau, heavily drew from organic forms. One sees echoes of the contemporary developments of manufactured print media influencing even fine art making at the time. Editor: I see that influence. It’s almost as if the image is designed to be reproduced, maybe even as wallpaper? There’s a repeat pattern quality. And those squirrels… they’re charming, but slightly uncanny. Almost cartoon-like. Curator: The flattening of perspective and simplified shapes also underscore that illustrative quality and show how contemporary forms of art and mass media could inspire artist-designers such as Verneuil to explore non-traditional boundaries for artmaking and new visual expressions rooted in commerce and design for daily life. Consider, too, how readily Verneuil embraces the watercolor medium—typically employed for preparatory sketches at the time—as a medium with infinite reproductive possibility. Editor: Right, the blurring of fine art and functional design. To me, this watercolor possesses a strange quality: It is naturalistic but at the same time staged, like something found yet somehow totally constructed. It sparks something whimsical but oddly fabricated. Curator: Verneuil uses the vocabulary of mass production – like repeat patterns - to blur the divide. Editor: This was really illuminating. The play between utility and artistic aspiration gives "Écureuils" a surprisingly modern edge. Curator: It gives you an interesting snapshot into artistic dialogues around material possibilities that transcend the work itself.