The Moon & Marseille

"The show," said one enthusiastic reviewer, "reeks of garlic." He was describing an exhibition in Paris' Louvre of work by painters born in Provence (where garlic is even more popular than elsewhere in France). As a group, the paintings did give off a strong flavor: baroque, darkly passionate and hot as the Midi sun. The most famous of the lot were by Fragonard, Daumier and Cezanne. (In maturity they learned to blend garlic with more subtle spices, and rose above their baroque beginnings to highly individual achievements.) But the star of the Louvre's show was a lesser man, Adolphe Monticelli, who remained typically Provencal throughout his career, was almost forgotten for a time, and is now enjoying his own little renaissance.

In his lifetime (1824-86), Monticelli was a great success. From the day of his death his reputation unaccountably declined. His art was nervous, rich, and flickeringly intense. He loved to paint girls in bright gowns drifting like little flames through dark forests; sometimes he gave the same dreamlike quality to a straight portrait or still life. Technically, his work was very uneven. Being a romantic, he painted from the heart, and everything depended on how he felt at the moment. At his best, he evoked dusk in Provence as effectively as a great U.S. romantic, Albert Pinkham Ryder, suggested night in America.

Born in Marseille, Monticelli spent his middle years in Paris. When the.Germans invaded France in the Franco-Prussian War, he decided to go home again. He walked, stopping off at likely farmhouses and portraying the farmers' daughters to earn his keep. The journey took eight pleasant months. In Marseille he settled down to steady work in a red-shuttered studio and to a genial evening round of opera and absinthe. It is said that when admirers flocked about his cafe table to praise his work, the bald, bearded old Bohemian would blithely reply: "I don't know what you're talking about; I just arrived from the moon."

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