.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
After their wedding, Le Mayeur and Ni Pollok built a cottage on Sanur beach which was described by the artist: " I've had a cottage built on the seashore, far away from the other people, especially the Europeans. As it is in the middle of a paddy it can only be approached by way of the beach our little house makes up a worthy frame around her (Pollok's) beauty." (Drs. Jop Ubbens and Cathinka Huizing, Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprhs: Painter-Traveller, Wijk en Aalburg, 1995, p.109).
Although the seclusion of the house was deliberately planned by the artist, he nevertheless remained very hospitable to his visitors and as Le Mayeur 's fame soared, many celebrities visited the little cottage by the beach of Sanur. Amongst them was the novelist Nevil Shute who related the pleasant experience in his novel Round the bend: "We went once or twice to a place on the other side of the strip called Sanur, where a Belgian artist was married to a very fine Balinese woman. I think that was the most wonderful house I have ever been in, the walls covered with paintings of the Balinese and their way of life, and full of Balinese young men and women so that it was difficult to say in memory which of the scenes remembered from that house were real ones and which were painted." (Ibid., p. 169.).
Apart from the interior of his Sanur home which the artist repeatedly painted, the lotus pond in his garden was another favourite subject of the artist. The portrayal of glistening sunlight bouncing off the water and changing the shades and tones of the lotuses offered the best setting for an impressionist palette as the contrast of light and shadow allowed manoeuvrability of colours. Albeit an often repeated composition, the artist's ability to create so many different versions of the same subject testifies to his ingenuity and the ever-present elements of freshness and uniqueness gave each and everyone of them a character of its own. Indeed, as an impressionist has once commented that an artist should only have one subject-matter and it should be painted repeatedly till it attains perfection.
Although the seclusion of the house was deliberately planned by the artist, he nevertheless remained very hospitable to his visitors and as Le Mayeur 's fame soared, many celebrities visited the little cottage by the beach of Sanur. Amongst them was the novelist Nevil Shute who related the pleasant experience in his novel Round the bend: "We went once or twice to a place on the other side of the strip called Sanur, where a Belgian artist was married to a very fine Balinese woman. I think that was the most wonderful house I have ever been in, the walls covered with paintings of the Balinese and their way of life, and full of Balinese young men and women so that it was difficult to say in memory which of the scenes remembered from that house were real ones and which were painted." (Ibid., p. 169.).
Apart from the interior of his Sanur home which the artist repeatedly painted, the lotus pond in his garden was another favourite subject of the artist. The portrayal of glistening sunlight bouncing off the water and changing the shades and tones of the lotuses offered the best setting for an impressionist palette as the contrast of light and shadow allowed manoeuvrability of colours. Albeit an often repeated composition, the artist's ability to create so many different versions of the same subject testifies to his ingenuity and the ever-present elements of freshness and uniqueness gave each and everyone of them a character of its own. Indeed, as an impressionist has once commented that an artist should only have one subject-matter and it should be painted repeatedly till it attains perfection.