"Catherine the great" Painting

Nicolas Maureau paints figures we think we already know : saints, rulers, mythological characters. He lets them slip into our present, a king appears in contemporary clothing, a mythological scene becomes an ordinary moment, a saint is shown before they become the legend we remember.

Across series such as En Majesté, Mystiques, Mélancolie, he asks what remains of a story once its original context is stripped away: the gesture, the expression, the human experience, rather than the narrative itself.

His series En majesté revisits historical figures associated with power through the conventions of the traditional portrait. Rulers and other figures of authority are presented as they might appear today, creating a direct encounter between the codes of historical portraiture and contemporary life.

In Mystiques, Maureau returns to the representation of saints, one of the most enduring subjects in Western painting. Rather than depicting their legendary deeds or miracles, he presents them as young, solitary figures, suspended before the moment when they become the saints we know. Their identities are suggested through a few traditional attributes, but these clues never completely explain the image.

Mélancolie, created between 2020 and 2021, began during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on the long history of melancholy in Western art, from mythology and religious imagery to literature and genre painting, the series considers melancholy as a timeless human experience rather than simply a condition of its time.

Across these different bodies of work, Maureau returns to subjects that seem familiar and asks what remains of them when they are removed from their original time.