This is the dining room with its fresco painted walls by Alfred Courmes. The painting was completed between 1937-39 when the embassy was under construction.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Dining Room, French Embassy, Ottawa
This is the dining room with its fresco painted walls by Alfred Courmes. The painting was completed between 1937-39 when the embassy was under construction.
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I don't know Alfred Courmes but there are many large murals (especially in the USA) from the mid 1930s that celebrated honest workers, justice, community cooperation, socialism and emerging from the Great Depression. These murals always seemed to be full of hope and heroism.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what elements the French embassy staff wanted in their murals in Ottawa. If they had radical themes in their murals, it probably didn't matter. After all, the dining room looked like an inner sanctum.
Hels
Thanks Hels
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Ottawa tour booklet that we got at the 10th World Congress on Art Deco the murals depict a day in the life of a village in Provence. It is called 'Happy France'.
The panel with the young men gathering behind a French flag is presented on the French Embassy website (http://www.ambafrance-ca.org/gallery/galerieFrameset-en.htm) virtual tour as perhaps draftees or enlistees for WWII since this panel was compeleted 21 Jul 1939 just a month and a half before the start of that war.
David