From September 5, 2026
to September 6, 2026

It was with undiminished emotion that we returned to the Domaine d’Orvès to prepare this new exhibition.

We passed through the entrance gate that marks the beginning of the delightful ascent towards the house and studio of the painter Pierre Deval, and as the water trickles down the steps, irrigating this luxuriant, untamed garden and feeding the pools where carp and frogs live side by side, it also seems to flood our minds with some of the most serene and poetic thoughts we have experienced in a very long time.

Orvès still stands firm.

Here, wild flowers are allowed to grow between the stones, because it is more beautiful that way—especially when nature herself has had the idea. There is no desire for everything to be perfect; rather, every effort is made to allow things to breathe and to live.

There are few places like Orvès, capable of sheltering the reveries of poets, musicians and painters, who, needless to say, all speak the same language. Few places have so successfully eluded the traps of modernity and relentless urbanisation, escaping human greed only to offer us, in return, a fraternal shoulder, a quiet shore upon which to lay down our arms.

In the mid-1920s, a young couple had known how to recognise the singular grace hidden among the tangled growth and tall grasses of an abandoned garden. This house would become forever the home of the painter Pierre Deval and his wife, Henriette.

Out of love for Orvès and through sheer conviction, they would overcome, not without difficulty, the trials that threatened it: first the German occupation, which drove them from their home and devastated the estate. They would devote years of their lives to replanting its trees and patiently rebuilding it.

Later came the formidable jaws of concrete, as urban expansion closed in around Orvès. Once again, Pierre and Henriette Deval moved mountains to save it. They succeeded in obtaining protected status for the property, rescuing the garden at the very last moment from being turned into a housing development.

Pierre Deval found there an inexhaustible source of inspiration for his painting.

He rarely depicted Orvès directly, although he sometimes did so in drawings of the reservoir, the terrace and even the studio. Rather, he immersed himself in this haven of preserved nature, of the kind he had already come to appreciate during his artistic training. He had been one of the residents of the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, having received a travelling scholarship intended for young painters eager to encounter a luxuriant, exuberant Mediterranean landscape and its entire ecosystem. The nudity that Deval so delighted in depicting in his work is perhaps the most evident expression of our belonging to this higher natural order, itself a creator of beauty.

The wild beauty of ancient muses also revealed itself here to the many artist friends who came to visit the Devals.

Henri Bosco wrote his Quartiers de Jeunesse here; Pierre-Jean Jouve conceived poems here… Albert Marquet and Willy Eisenchitz shared with delight those long summer evenings when the pleasure of dining among friends seemed to stretch endlessly into the night. Pierre and Henriette were generous in sharing the joys of Orvès, their paradise.

Their daughter Françoise is now the guardian of this sanctuary, heir to an unconditional love for this land, steeped in the harmonies of singing water, the croaking of frogs and the notes of a piano.

Today officially recognised as a Jardin remarquable—a “Remarkable Garden”—Orvès continues to enchant dreamers. Thanks to her, the soul of the estate has been preserved.

She does us the honour of welcoming us here, where the spirit of Pierre Deval still lingers, even within his studio, that most sacred laboratory of his art. We enter on tiptoe, careful not to frighten the ghost.

I wish Orvès could be protected still further; that some amulet might guard it against every danger that threatens it; that this place might be cherished, loved and shared; that it might be handed down to the generations now growing up, and to those yet to come, for many years to come.

This is my prayer for Orvès, refuge, solace, rampart.