Last week was the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied landings in the north of France during WWII that led to the invasion of Germany. The trauma, sacrifice, and individual stories of that day were recorded by Cornelius Ryan in his classic 1959 book The Longest Day. In doing research Ryan talked to hundreds of veterans of that day whose experiences stayed with them their entire lives.
Americans are most familiar with Omaha Beach and Utah Beach where the US infantry divisions came ashore. But on down the coast to the east, there were other beaches codenamed Gold, Juno, and way down at the eastern end of the invasion area, Sword Beach. Sword is where a French Commando unit attached to the British Army went into action. One of the men in that unit was Guy de Montlaur, who after the war put his experiences on canvas.
Montlaur was born in 1918, and in the 1930s studied art at the prestigious Académie Julian in Paris. He took part in his first exhibition in 1937 but then joined the French Army the next year. When the war broke out, he made several daring raids behind enemy lines. After the fall of France, he made it to London where he joined up with the Free French Forces based there. He returned to his home country on the morning of June 6, 1944. He received 7 citations for valor including the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor.
After the war, he came to the United States to study at the famous Art Students League of New York, whose roster of teachers and alumni includes pretty much every painter you’ve heard of. He returned to France in 1948 and worked his way through different styles, beginning with vivid and powerful cubism. He had his first solo show in Paris in 1949. The Paris Museum of Modern Art purchased one of his paintings from that show.
He rarely spoke about his experiences in the war. His daughter said that “It was just better for him to express it in painting, rather than in conversations.” Because he often painted in abstractions, she said, “he could pretty much protect the viewer from what (was) actually happening.” To him, however, his paintings were clear. “I don’t understand why they can’t guess at all the distress here, right in front of them, as it was during the war.” Last summer in commemoration of the 80th anniversary there was an exhibit of his paintings at the Chateau de Castries in the south of France.
He died in 1977 and is one of five French soldiers buried in the predominantly British military cemetery in Ranville, in Normandy, the first French village liberated on D-day. His art after the war helped him work through his traumatic experiences during it.
