Chris­t­ian Boeringer

L’impression de l’avoir déjà vu !

The first time I met Alain Godon was at the Lou­vre Museum. We had arranged, through my eldest daugh­ter, to meet in front of the entrance to the Riche­lieu wing on the rue de Riv­oli, oppo­site the Palais Royal. I had had a glimpse of his very orig­i­nal style and work from the cat­a­logues I had been shown, but was yet to meet the man whom I had only seen in a few photos.

Know­ing that I had access to the Lou­vre and that I was really pas­sion­ate about this mag­i­cal place, a tem­ple to Cul­ture, Alain Godon, as yet unfa­mil­iar with the new gal­leries and their paint­ings, had asked me if I would agree to be his guide that after­noon.
And so it was that I found myself, a lit­tle early as is my cus­tom, on the pave­ment of the rue de Riv­oli star­ing at the faces in the crowds, which were mov­ing in time and at the pace of the three colours of the traf­fic lights. I was look­ing at all the slightly bohemian men, who were young with shoul­der length hair and a small beard and who looked as though they were prepar­ing to be swal­lowed up within the shad­ows of the Riche­lieu alley way.
Even­tu­ally I saw a young man with long, wavy hair and a goa­tee look­ing as though he had stepped straight out of a novel with capes and swords, or, per­haps indeed, out of a film; it was him and he was on time! At that same moment, I had the fleet­ing impres­sion that I had seen him before…
With just over a cou­ple of hours to spare and hav­ing plunged straight into His­tory whilst walk­ing along the ditches of the cas­tle of Philippe Auguste, we decided that we would take a look at the mas­ter­pieces of French paint­ing that hang on the walls of the sec­ond floor of the Sully Pavil­lon and then con­tinue on to the gal­leries ded­i­cated to the artists of the North­ern schools.
With just over a cou­ple of hours to spare and hav­ing plunged straight into His­tory whilst walk­ing along the ditches of the cas­tle of Philippe Auguste, we decided that we would take a look at the mas­ter­pieces of French paint­ing that hang on the walls of the sec­ond floor of the Sully Pavil­lon and then con­tinue on to the gal­leries ded­i­cated to the artists of the North­ern schools.
Hav­ing left behind the noisy throngs gath­ered below the pyra­mid, we found our­selves in a peace­ful calm, with no dan­ger of being either both­ered or jos­tled and able to con­tem­plate at leisure the works of Frag­o­nard, Wat­teau, Boucher, Le Nain, La Tour, Chardin, Ingres… which are no com­pe­ti­tion, in terms of fame, for the Mona Lisa.
Hardly a soul in front of the Van Eycks, Rem­brandts, Rubens,…. and, stand­ing in front of “The Astronomer” and “The Lace­maker”, on dis­play for us alone, Alain con­fided in me of the love and admi­ra­tion he had always had for Ver­meer.
“When I think nearly 20 years ago I was on the pave­ment just oppo­site, near the metro, draw­ing on the pave­ment to earn a few pen­nies in order to make a liv­ing.” This sen­tence, uttered almost sotto voce by Alain as we were tak­ing our leave oppo­site the Place du Palais Royal, instantly rekin­dled a mem­ory hid­den away in the back of my mind.
In the course of my years spent work­ing in the Lou­vre, I used to pass by the “copy­ists”, their easels stand­ing in front of the paint­ing for which they had received an “autho­ri­sa­tion to copy”. I would often stop and admire their work and exchange a few words with the ama­teur, or pro­fes­sional, artist.
At this same time, it was com­mon on the Place du Palais Royal to see Greek and Roman stat­ues as well as Egypt­ian mum­mies draped in fab­ric and cov­ered in white paint and tal­cum pow­der; after a long period of remain­ing sta­tic they would sud­denly move and cause a start of sur­prise from the casual onlook­ers. Amongst these inter­mit­tent, in the strictest sense of the word, per­form­ers, I noticed one day a young man crouch­ing on the ground and draw­ing straight onto the tar­mac with his coloured chalks; it was easy to recog­nise “Jupiter and Thetis” by Ingres.
I have no idea as to when he had started on this copy of the work, a post card repro­duc­tion by his side, but even then this work of art was well advanced. A crowd had gath­ered around the young man and every­one was admir­ing in silence the invis­i­ble process that passes between the artist’s eye and his hand as he adds his strokes of colour. I saw the same man sev­eral evenings in a row until he had fin­ished his pic­ture; I do remem­ber that I spoke to him and told him how liked it. A few days later, a rainy night would wash away this mas­ter­piece and, much to the loss of the “quartier’s” reg­u­lars, the artist was never to appear again.
Who would have thought that some twenty years later I would be able to put a name to this young and tal­ented artist, who all those years ago had been nameless?

Cris­t­ian Boeringer