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We know very little about this painter, who was probably of Flemish origin, perhaps from Liège as his surname suggests. He was closely associated with the Court and the Gobelins factory.
His output reveals a painter who must have been so overwhelmed by private demand that he did not attempt the academic adventure, despite the ties of friendship.
The paintings by Paul LIÉGEOIS reveal the influence of Lubin Baugin (Pithiviers 1612 - Paris 1663), François Habert (active in Paris in the mid-17th century), and Willem Van Aelst (Rotterdam 1627 -1683).
From Lubin Baugin, Paul LIÉGEOIS retains the simplicity of his devices and very dark backgrounds. Like François Habert, on the other hand, Paul LIÉGEOIS focuses on rendering the veins of leaves, the drops of water, the pearls of sugar that plums or figs secrete, like so many works of interwoven gold, silver or glass thread1.
By contrast, Paul LIÉGEOIS found in Van Aelst a more discursive, more effortless deployment of composition, and for a time his fruit displays had the loose, nonchalantly elegant character of Van Aelst's comparable works. Van Aelst's predilection for blue or crimson velvets, with their aristocratic connotations and tactile qualities admirably rendered by Paul LIÉGEOIS, and his fascination with the metallic effects of foliage, are precisely Van Aelst's characteristics, which he adopted and practiced for a long time. Yet Paul LIÉGEOIS's fruit still lifes are born less of a match between his work and that of Van Aelst than of the implementation of a common thought that the two painters developed closely together. This is evidenced by the fact that the fruit still lifes of plums, peaches and grapes arranged in a frieze above a partly draped marble console that Paul LIÉGEOIS and Van Aelst painted between 1649 and 1655, were not painted again by Van Aelst after his departure from Paris.
DESCRIPTION AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PAINTING
A few apricots and plums are grouped above a console covered entirely in ruby-red velvet.
ruby-red velvet. Leaves from fig and apricot trees mingle with the fruit, giving it a green finery. The painter has framed his subject closely, so that drapery, fruit and background emphasize the horizontality of the composition, to which only the foliage lends a form of breathing through its gentle undulation. Similarly, only the twigs of the apricot tree, the veins of the leaves and the droplets of water hanging from their green blades and catching the light give a sustained vibration to a palette all surrounded by mauves, dark reds and muted oranges, while no ray of light pierces the brown of the background.
Stylistically, the painting we've examined here is similar to the work of Pierre Dupuis (Montfort-l'Amaury1610 - Paris 1682) from the 1660s, in terms of the mineral aspect of the foliage2, which Paul LIÉGEOIS did not use in his paintings from the late 1640s, when the dialogue with the Parisian Van Aelst is more marked3. Our painting reveals the deeper influence of Louise Moillon (Paris 1609 - 1696), a generation older than his own. This influence is detectable in the vigorous plasticity and firmness of the apricot drawing, and in the hard stone polish of each fruit. Finally, it can be seen in the singular way, both synthetic and precise, in which the
and precise way in which the stalks knot together, without any overly realistic description. He omits the mosses, knots and fungi that might cover them, leaving the eye free to take in the pure line that outlines them and whose purpose is to imprison the ray that illuminates it. The light falls from the front, as if the fruit had been there for all eternity, in a kind of night that a half-open door would suddenly dissolve, revealing the composition's edges and lines of force.
