Initially supported by Guillaume Apollinaire before the Great War, Pierre Roy emerged from obscurity by making his entry into the history of Surrealism at the group's first exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in 1925, alongside P. Klee, G. de Chirico, M. Ernst, H. Arp, A. Masson, J. Miró, P. Picasso and Man Ray. A solitary and non-doctrinaire painter, Pierre Roy preferred to remain on the fringes of the Surrealist movement. Initially an illustrator of books and magazines, and a theatre set designer, the artist developed a trompe l'oeil style of painting with great technical mastery.

In his book ‘Memorabilia Dada & Surréalisme 1916-1970’, the Surrealist historian Georges Sebbag reproduced and commented on our painting (p. 257): Pierre Roy sur la plage (Pierre Roy on the beach) ‘Pierre Roy, from Nantes, was haunted by the quayside, the beach, by any corridor or perspective overlooking the open sea. In 1930, in  - Coquillages avant l'orage - (Shells before the storm), he depicted one of his secret immobile scenes. On an ocean beach, a bamboo and four seashells stand out in the foreground, followed by two series of masts in a row, and finally, on the horizon, an expanse of sea under a leaden sky. It seems as if the shells, before the storm, are announcing to us that our journeys or long voyages are coming to an end or are washed up in the sand’.

Coquillages avant l'orage is a highly representative example of the artist's pictorial language. In a quasi-photographic treatment, Pierre Roy depicts a lifeless beach and assembles in the foreground disparate and disproportionate elements in the spirit of an illusionist collage: empty hulls, boat masts without sails, bamboo without foliage. In the distance, the sea forms the horizon, with the sky taking up most of the composition. The theme of the sea occupies a special place in Pierre Roy's work, as it evokes the landscapes of his youth between the Port of Nantes and the Atlantic Ocean: ‘Most of my work is made up of memories of events that occurred during my childhood ... the sky that I have always painted and that I will probably always paint is the light blue sky with feathery clouds that stretches from Angers to the sea’. By his own admission, Pierre Roy would have liked to be a sailor, but he gave in to family pressure not to follow this desire. This thwarted dream may explain why everything to do with the sea and travel is so strongly represented in his paintings.
This dreamlike composition in soft tones produces a harmonious, poetic effect, and helps to mask the intriguing, even disturbing, side of the image.

Pierre ROY - Coquillages après l'orage, 1949 - Oil on canvas - 25 x 41,6 cm - Collection Anne-Françoise Roy, Paris

Coquillages après l'orage, painted in 1949, is a direct echo of our 1930 painting.
The same composition, the same technique, the same dimensions... but the boat masts are gone, the bamboo has almost disappeared into the sand, and desolation reigns. Although the storm has passed, the sea is still rough and the sky dark, giving us a feeling of melancholy.