Description
Biography :
Émile Morlaix is a French sculptor, born March 19, 1909. He studied with Aimé-Gustave Blaise at the School of Fine Arts in Lille along with René Leleu, Gérard Choain, Lucien Fenaux and Gaston Watkin. Entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris, he joined the workshops of Paul Landowski and Marcel Gaumont. Winner of the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1937 with Apollo and the Muses, he became professor of sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Lille.
He works both direct carving and modelling, executes bronzes but also many works in ceramic or enamelled stoneware.
Émile Morlaix receives commissions in the Nord department (Lille and Douai) but his works are also present in the rest of France: Monument to the Resistance in Menton, group of the Three Graces in Amiens. The Memorial to the deportees of Ravensbrück, inaugurated in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, represents two linked hands emerging from a block of stone. A street in the city of Douai bears his name. He died on June 10, 1990 in Paris.
Works in Public Collections:
Albain-Saint-Nazaire, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette: Orientation table, 1976.
Amiens:
La Madeleine Cemetery: Charles-Gabriel Vérecque, bronze medallion adorning his tomb.
Rue du faubourg de Hem: Child Poseidon, fountain, stone sculpture.
Three Graces, fountain, stone sculpture.
South School City: Woman in Creation, 1953, bas-relief.
Armentières, Saint-Roch parish church: René Doudermy, 1949, bronze bust
Anzin, Théophile-Jouglet Museum: Le Grisou, sandstone.
Aunay-sur-Odon, The Cook, Hôtel de la Place, 1949, stone sculpture.
Bapaume: Memorial to Abel Guidet, 1948, bronze.
Bayeux, rue du General de Dais: Statue of Alain Chartier, 1947, stone sculpture.
Boulogne-Billancourt.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, place Frédéric-Sauvage: La Boulonnaise, high relief, 1954.
Douai, Chartreuse Museum:
Young Girl at the toilet, bronze
Madonna and Child, earthenware.
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore Library: Bas-relief of the muses, 1955.
Boys’ high school: decorations, with Robert Bouquillon, Albert Bouquillon, Georges Delplanque and Binet.
Dunkirk (Mardyck): Saint-Nicolas church, Christ on the cross and stoup.
Ants.
Fretin: Saint-Martin church, bas-relief representing Saint Martin
Grande-Synthe, Saint-Jacques church: pediment
Lambersart, Church of Our Lady of Fatima: Virgin and Christ on the cross.
Lewarde, historic mining center: Kneeling miner.
Lille:
Monument to Pierre Legrand, bronze.
Vauban Garden: Édouard Lalo, 1968, medallion.
Palace of Fine Arts:
Apollo and the Muses, 1937, high relief, original plaster;
The genius of the country
Apollo, bronze bust;
Female bust, original plaster;
Wissembourg, model of the monument to the dead of Wissembourg, original plaster;
Three Bathers, stone group.
Menton, War memorial, 1939-1945
Nœux-les-Mines, War memorial, 195611
Paris :
City of Paris Museum of Modern Art.
Père-Lachaise cemetery: Memorial to the deportees of Ravensbrück.
Petite-Synthe, Saint-Nicolas Church: Statue of Saint-Nicolas, 1960
Ronchin: Church of the Risen Christ, stoups and candlesticks.
Saverne: War memorial, 1956
Valenciennes.
Wattrelos, Léo-Lagrange school, bas-relief.
Wissembourg: War memorial, bronze.