Charles de Gaulle
'Vaste Programme'

This portrait is an oil rendering of a black and white photograph which the artist found intriguing for several reasons.

 

Starting with the eyes. One cannot help but wonder what was going through the man's head at the very moment the picture was taken.

Do those heavy-lidded eyes reveal contentment? Brought perhaps by the simple, ephemeral joy of puffing a cigarette?

Or is it amusement? A smile of complicity shared with the photographer?

One may also read repletion. The look of bliss one sports after a pleasant meal, copiously washed down with a silky Burgundy.

Could we even perceive some sort of relief? The man looking back to the sombre days of 1940, when he found himself almost alone and declared an outcast by the Vichy regime?

Maybe it is all of it.

 

Another detail of interest: it is not often that one recalls General de Gaulle dressed in plain clothes.

One tends to associate the man with his uniform and typical French kepi, the shape of a gilded drum.

At any rate, De Gaulle's face is an interesting one for a portrait painter: a substantial chin, drooping eyelids and sizeable ears make it a stimulating subject. For nothing is more depressing to a portraitist than a smooth, featureless head!

 

Below the artist's monogram one can read "Vaste programme !", with is French for "Bold enterprise". An exclamation said to have been uttered by the General as he caught sight of an inscription painted on the windshield of a jeep. Jeep which belonged to Raymond Dronne, a French officer at the head of a unit which entered Paris on August 24th, 1944. "Mort aux cons", meaning "Down with the fools" in its polite version, was not so much a reference to the German occupants. It was, one understands, mostly aimed at the French who collaborated with the enemy. [arrêt] "Vaste programme" alludes to the hardship such an undertaking would cause!

One can perhaps view De Gaulle's pensive gaze as that of a man who was busy pondering that very question...