Artist · 3 prints
Maurice Pillard Verneuil Prints
About Maurice Pillard Verneuil
Maurice Pillard Verneuil was a French artist and decorator, born in Saint-Quentin in 1869, who died in 1942. He first studied architecture, then trained with the Swiss designer Eugène Grasset, one of the leading figures of Art Nouveau in Paris. Like his teacher, Verneuil was drawn to Japanese art and to nature, especially plants, animals and the sea, and he devoted most of his career to decorative design.
Verneuil is best known for his pattern books: portfolios of designs meant as models for wallpaper, textiles, ceramics, stained glass, embroidery and jewellery. In L'Animal dans la décoration (1897), made with Grasset, peacocks, fish, insects and birds become flowing decorative motifs. Étude de la plante (about 1903) offers more than 300 colour drawings showing how real plants can be turned into ornament. His later Kaleidoscope (1925), made with his wife, the painter Adélaïde de Marval, moved toward the bold geometric patterns of Art Deco. Several of his portfolios were coloured by pochoir, a French hand-stencilling technique.
Maurice Pillard Verneuil prints: reproductions of the Art Nouveau ornament plates Verneuil designed as models for wallpaper, textiles and decorative art. The collection includes Papillons et Pavots (Butterflies and Poppies), Plate 30; Paons dans les Sorbiers (Peacocks in the Rowans), Plate 21; and Capucine (Nasturtium), Plate 41.
This selection focuses on Verneuil's plant and animal plates: poppies, nasturtiums, rowan berries, butterflies and peacocks turned into flat, repeating decorative designs with clear outlines. The plates show how he simplified real flowers and birds into pattern while keeping them recognisable. They come from the pattern books he made for designers, so each one reads as a finished decorative panel rather than a picture of a scene.
The flat colour and pattern suit kitchens, dining rooms, hallways and bathrooms, and two or three plates hung in a row work well along a corridor or above a sideboard. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
![Capucine [nasturtium ornament plate] by Maurice Pillard Verneuil — Trailing nasturtium vines fill a stained-glass style panel](http://9artprints.com/cdn/shop/files/clean-main_d2169159-cdfa-468c-b80a-fcfb488fbd99.jpg?v=1790027064&width=2134)