MONT COUDON PAINTED BY OTHON FRIESZ

OTHON FRIESZ (1879 -1949) 

Mont Coudon  (702 m - 2, 303 ft) 

France (Var) 

The mountain 

Mont Coudon (702 m - 2, 303ft) is one of the three main mountains of a range called Monts Toulonnais in the Var region in the south of France, near the city harbour of Toulon and La Valette-du-Var.  The Monts Toulonnais are the general appellation of the numerous mountains around Toulon. The highest is Mount Caume (804 m-2,638ft), the least high is the massif of Cape Sicié (358 m) -1,174ft). The Monts toulonnais are also composed of the Baou de Quatre Oures, the Gros-Cerveau (The Big Brain), Mount Faron, which is the best known, and finally Mount Coudon. 

The summit of Mont Coudon is banned from access because it houses at its summit the Fort Girardon, a very important military base of the "Mediterranean" Navy. The Alps are visible for many days in the year, especially on strong Mistral wind days during which the weather is clear.  In November and only during one and three days in the year, it is possible to see the Corsican peaks by atmospheric reverberation. The panorama is hidden to the west by Mount Faron and Mount Caume.

The Coudon represents the end of the range of the Monts Toulonnais, which begin in the vicinity of Bandol to finish in a peak on the town of La Valette-du-Var. It is of calcareous constitution. 

The writer George Sand ascended  Mount Coudon on May 21, 1861, and mentions it in his diary, Voyage dit du Midi, as well as in the work Tamaris. The ascent is 6.1 km long and has a vertical drop of 438 meters for an average slope of 7.2%.

The painter 

Achille-Émile Othon Friesz who later called himself Othon Friesz, and used to sign his paintings E. Othon Friesz, a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement.  While he was at the Lycée, he met his lifelong friend Raoul Dufy. He and Dufy studied at the Le Havre School of Fine Arts in 1895-96 and then went to Paris together for further study. In Paris, Friesz met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault. Like them, he rebelled against the academic teaching of Bonnat and became a member of the Fauves, exhibiting with them in 1907. The following year, Friesz returned to Normandy and to a much more traditional style of painting, since he had discovered that his personal goals in painting were firmly rooted in the past. He opened his own studio in 1912 and taught until 1914 at which time he joined the army for the duration of the war. He resumed living in Paris in 1919 and remained there, except for brief trips to Toulon and the Jura Mountains, until his death in 1949. During the last thirty years of his life, he painted in a style very far from that of his earlier colleagues and his contemporaries. Having abandoned the lively arabesques and brilliant colors of his Fauve years, Friesz returned to the more sober palette he had learned in Le Havre from his professor Charles Lhuillier and to an early admiration for Poussin, Chardin, and Camille Corot. He painted in a manner that respected Paul Cézanne's ideas of logical composition, simple tonality, solidity of volume, and distinct separation of planes. A faint baroque flavor adds vigor to his  landscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings.