Cooper Hewitt says...
Maurice Marinot (French, 1882-1960) born at Troyes, France, exhibited strong artistic tendencies from childhood, primarily through a passion for drawing. He never sat for the Baccalaureat exam as he had already convinced his parents to send him to Paris to the École de Beaux-Arts, where he studied with a painter known as Cormon, who specialized in pre-historic scenes. His small circle of friends included some major artistic lights of his day, from decorator-designer André Mare, André Derain, Jacques Villon, and André Dunoyer de Sezonac, with whom he remained close after his 1905 return to Troyes, where he remained for the rest of his life except for short trips.
This did not mean that Marinot’s work was not exhibited outside Troyes. Indeed, he submitted a painting to the 1905 Salon d’Automne, at which the person in charge of arranging the artwork put a classical sculpture among works in which he noticed an almost violent treatment and strong colors, which included Marinot, but also, among others, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Albert Marquez, and Maurice Vlaminck. Upon seeing the arrangement a critic supposedly said “Donatello amidst the wild beasts,” or “Donatello au milieu des fauves,” from which followed their popular designation “Les Fauves”. This group’s strong colors were soon seen in Marinot’s glasswork.
Marinot continued to exhibit his paintings alongside other “Fauves” at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendents until 1913, and in the New York Armory show of that year, after which he turned to glass design that he had begun in 1911 when he first visited glassworks being run by his friends the Viart brothers Eugène and Gabriel at Bar-sur-Seine, a small production. Stunned by the beauty of molten glass and strong contrasts in light, color as well as the physical forces of heat from the fire, he was anxious to create his artistic expressions in this new medium, and the Viarts were glad to help.
Starting with models for vases, bowls and bottles made under his direction, Marinot applied enamel to the glass for the colored decoration. He soon realized that he was covering the glass and diminishing its importance. He thus started to look for ways to create colors during various stages of the actual glass production. His earliest shown pieces of new glass were in the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendents concurrently with his latest paintings. In the 1913 Salon d’Automne, André Mare (later part of Süe et Mare) produced a living room with his rich red damask, and furniture made with rare woods and a lacquer liquor table that featured multiple sections opening fan-like to reveal a collection of glassware all designed by Marinot, which the critics and public admired. Among these was Léon Rosenthal in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts: “It has been a long time since an innovation of such great importance has come to enrich the art of glass”. That same year, 1913, Marinot had his first major exhibition of his glass, and thenceforth in Paris, Adrien Hébrard, who had cast bronzes for Dégas, became his sole agent and held Marinot exhibitions at his gallery. He was soon patronized by the elite, including Baron Robert de Rothschild, and the Musée du Luxembourg.
Shortly after Marinot’s initial designs were made under his supervision at the Viart factory, he was making his own glass there. He was called to serve in World War I, which limited his glasswork, although he spent much time in Troyes. He drew, including many watercolors while in Morocco during time there in 1917, after which he returned to the bench with new ideas and colors in his mind.
By the early 1920s, Marinot was making vases and stoppered bottles with thick layers of glass, both smooth and engraved. He was able to include strong colors within thick glass walls, and sometimes he scattered air bubbles into his work. He considered his works as art, rejecting any primary claim of functionalism or “decorativeness” to the art, and could take up to a year refining it to satisfaction.
Not only did Hébrard’s annual exhibitions bring Marinot critical acclaim (and inspiring the Metropolitan Museum of Art to make its first Marinot acquisitions in 1923 and 1924 from Hébriard), but the 1925 Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industrielles modernes made his name well known and admired beyond France. The gallery of the Ambassade Française had an entire cabinet filled with Marinot glass and more of his glass was on display in the Musée de l’Art Contemporain designed by Süe et Mare for their Compagnie des Arts Français. Also in 1925, Marinot glass was first exhibited in New York even before A Selected Collection of Objects from the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art, a traveling exhibition organized by the American Association of Museums that showed eight examples of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1926. In the catalogue of the 1926 Selection the comment in the list of objects states:
Marinot is often referred to by his countrymen as possessing the greatest artistic genius of any of the workers in decorative glass. He is undoubtedly a man of prolific talent who has developed many novel techniques and interesting effects in this material.
By the time that the “Exposition of Art in Trade at Macy’s” exhibited Marinot’s work in May of 1927, a piece by Marinot and Francois Decorchemont together is listed as “Courtesy of César de Hauke” who would continue to represent Marinot in New York for some years. Lord & Taylor exhibited three Marinot pieces in their ground-breaking “Exposition of modern French decorative art” in early 1928. In the introduction to the glass section of the exhibition, it is stated:
“Among the most prominent artists in this field (glass-making) are Henri Simmon, Maurice Marinot, Marcel Goupy, René Lalique and François Decorchemont. Maurice Marinot is regarded by many of his countrymen as the greatest artistic genius among the workers in decorative glass. He creates in various techniques. Some of his productions are solid, substantial bottles and vases in which the glass is permeated with bubbles, others have deep etched designs, and others have pattern in enamel.”
Maurice Marinot continued to enjoy popularity for his sculptural glass designs, usually using either acid-etching or internally decorated glass, often on crackled or frosted glass that resulted in strong contrasts of color and texture. He made about 2000 pieces between 1920 and 1937 when the Viard factory closed down and he ceased making glass. Although, as with his painting which he still did for his own pleasure, many of his glass designs remained at home, the allied bombing of Troyes preceding its liberation in World War II destroyed much of his glass, adding to the impossibility of creating new exhibitions in the post war period. Although he returned to painting, Marinot was not strong enough to resume glass making as he no longer had the energy.
Henri Clouzot, the eminent French critic and curator-author sung Marinot’s praises in 1923 article in Art et Décoration magazine:
“Maurice Marinot has but one muse in his service: pure art. This fine craftsman produces only rare objects, the pride of museums and private collections… Marinot has resolved the difficult problems of giving his vases the qualities of robustness and volume without taking away from the material its brilliance, its gleam or its transparency. In spite of his ingenious experiments, such as the distribution of air bubbles and colored powder in the body mass, his works still remain “glass”. His forms are simple but harmonious. One senses that they were born naturally from the end of the (glassmaker’s) rod…(and) that they express the very qualities of the métier. To say they were made by the hand of a worker is undoubtedly the greatest praise that one can bestow upon them… His eminently personal talent leads imitators to despair.”[i]
[i](vol .44 July-Dec, 1923) pp. 102-104 as cited in English in Jared Goss, French Art Deco, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 151
