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Auguste Baillayre
Auguste Baillayre
Born	May 1, 1879; Vernet-les-Bains, Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Died	December 16, 1961 (aged 82); Bucharest, Romanian People's Republic
Resting place	Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest
Nationality	France; Romania
Alma mater	University of Grenoble
Known for	Painting
Title	Director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău
Spouse	Lidia Arionescu [ro] (m. 1907; died 1923)
Children	3, including Tatiana Baillayre

Auguste Baillayre (May 1, 1879–December 16, 1961) was a French-born Romanian painter. He was a professor at École des Beaux-Arts and the first director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Chișinău.^[1]^[2]

Biography

Baillayre was born on May 1, 1879 in Vernet-les-Bains, Pyrénées-Orientales, where he spent his childhood.^[3]^[4]^[5] After spending his adolescence in Georgia (1885–1898), he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam (1899–1902) and in Saint Petersburg (1903–1907), completing his studies at the University of Grenoble in 1913. He lived in Holland and Russia from 1899 to 1918, and from 1918 to 1943 he became the most important artistic personality in Bessarabia, where he was a professor at the Art School in Chișinău.^[2]^[4] Several of his works are kept at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău, whose first director he was in 1939.^[2]^[6]

In 1907 he married Lidia Arionescu-Baillayre [ro], a painter from Chișinău. They had two daughters, Tatiana, who also became an artist, and Marina. In 1943 he settled in Bucharest, where he died on December 16, 1961, at age 82;^[4] he's interred into the Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest.^[7] His grandson, the photographer Andrei Iliescu, recalls him saying: "Far away from the beloved ones, a stranger among strangers. In Russia I was French, in Holland and France I was Russian, in Romania, French again. Ultimately, alienated from everything and everybody."^[5]

Legacy

The Post of Moldova issued, on May 1, 2009, its 9th postal stationery cover with a preprinted stamp commemorating the 130th anniversary of Baillayre. A portrait of the painter appears on the stamp and two of his works, "Still Life with Fish" (1927) and "Self Portrait with Masks" (1945), are also reproduced on the left on the envelope.

Gallery

National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău

References

^ Muzeul Național de Artă al Moldovei
^ ^a ^b ^c "Le peintre Auguste Baillayre, "un étranger parmi toutes et tous". www.moldavie.fr (in French). Retrieved September 17, 2023.
^ Stavilǎ 2004, p. 11.
^ ^a ^b ^c Stavilă, Tudor (2019-08-09). "Auguste Baillayre – director și fondator al colecțiilor de artă basarabeană". Studiul Artelor și Culturologie (in Romanian). 2 (2): 161–166. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.3364383.
^ ^a ^b Iliescu, Andrei. "The family album". www.andreiiliescu.com. Retrieved September 17, 2023.
^ "Auguste Baillayre". Archived from the original on 2016-06-10. Retrieved 2010-08-12.
^ Bezviconi, Gheorghe G. [in Romanian] (1972). Necropola Capitalei (in Romanian). Bucharest: Nicolae Iorga Institute. p. 62.

Sources

Stavilǎ, Tudor (2004). Auguste Baillayre. Maeştri basarabeni din secolul XX (in Romanian). Chişinǎu: ARC. ISBN 9975-61-361-6. LCCN 2006-396454. OCLC 137244522.