Description
George Rodrigue (American/Louisiana, 1944-2013), "Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur", 1974, oil on canvas, signed lower left, signed, titled, inscribed and artist stamps on stretcher, label with title and date on reverse of frame, 48 in. x 35 3/4 in., framed with artist plaque, overall 55 5/8 in. x 43 3/4 in. x 2 in.Provenance: Acquired from the artist; Roland Begneaud Family Collection, Lafayette, LA. Ill.: Rodrigue, George. The Cajuns of George Rodrigue. Birmingham: Oxmoor House Inc., 1976, p. 38; Freundlich, Lawrence S. George Rodrigue: A Cajun Artist. New York: Penguin Studio, 1996, title page and p. 92; Perrin, Mary B., and Beverly C. Fuselier. Healing Traditions of South Louisiana: Prayers, Plants, and Poultices. Opelousas: Andrepont, 2022, cover. Exh.: “Blue Dog: The Art of George Rodrigue”, Dixon Gallery and Gardens Museum, Memphis, TN, July 29 – Oct. 14, 2007; “Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Forty Years of Cajuns, Blue Dogs, and Beyond Katrina”, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, Mar. 1 – June 8, 2008; “George Rodrigue: Cajuns and Blue Dogs / Paintings from Louisiana Family Collections 1971-2008”, Louisiana State Museum Wedell Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum, Patterson, LA, July 17 – Nov. 29, 2008; “Blue Dogs and Cajuns on the River”, Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA, July 23 – Sept. 18, 2011; “Blue Dogs in Texas”, Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX, Aug. 10 - Oct. 14, 2012. Note: One of George Rodrigue’s most captivating and memorable early works, “Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur,” depicts a unique and fascinating element of Cajun life. A traiteur is a traditional Cajun faith healer with an inherited gift for healing, and traiteur is the Cajun French word for “treater.” Some traiteurs treat any ailment, while others specialize. In Louisiana, Cajuns, Creoles and Native Americans all participate in some form of traditional healing. The Cajun traiteurs date back 250 years when the rich cultures of the people inhabiting South Louisiana – the early French Roman Catholic settlers, the Acadian refugees from Canada and the Native Americans – mingled together. Eventually, some of the healing traditions of the French-speaking African American community were incorporated as well. Most traiteurs consider their healing abilities a gift from God, and their practice often combines Catholic prayer with ritual or medicinal remedies. In Rodrigue’s canvas, Doc Moses heals an earache by touching his patient’s ears and making a circle around them to ward off evil spirits. Like most of his early paintings, the subject was inspired by Rodrigue’s upbringing in Acadiana. He witnessed many healings by his aunt, Tant Git, who would lick her thumb, trace three small crosses with it on the injury and whisper secret words from her prayer book. According to Wendy Rodrigue: “George also knew of a woman in New Iberia famous for treating warts. She concentrated on one wart a day and could even work over the telephone if you described to her the exact location of the growth. However, the power did not work across water, and so if you lived on the other side of the Bayou Teche, you had to cross the bridge (or take a pirogue) to the opposite bank to make your call.” By the mid-1970s, Rodrigue had built a solid reputation for his scenes of Cajun folklife, resulting in an expanded clientele and book opportunity with Oxmoor House, publisher of Southern Living Magazine in 1976. The large format book, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue, featured images of his best paintings of the time, including this one, with Rodrigue’s detailed descriptions in both English and French. These paintings follow in the footsteps of his first figurative painting, “Aioli Dinner” of 1971, now on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Each scene includes the artist’s distinctive oaks alongside figures and narrative elements. In “Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur,” Rodrigue’s figures inhabit his shadowy landscape and glow within the tilted white circle that both draws in and repels the viewer. While many of his Cajun series paintings have a haunting quality, none are quite as mysterious and riveting as this one. Rodrigue captured the folklore and culture of the Cajuns at a time when it was slipping away and evolving into something new. So often, the beautiful and unique aspects of a society are lost to time through this process. Rodrigue found a way through his distinctive graphic language to preserve and protect these stories. His early canvases, such as this one, are simultaneously personal, historical and modern. Ref.: Perrin, Mary Broussard and Beverly Constantine Fuselier. Healing Traditions of South Louisiana: Prayers, Plants, and Poultices. Opelousas, LA: Andrepont Publishing, LLC, 2022; Rodrigue, George. The Cajuns of George Rodrigue. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, Inc., 1976; Rodrigue, Wendy. "The Traiteur.” Musings of an Artist's Wife. Life & Legacy Foundation & Art Tour. www.legacyarttour.org. Accessed July 24, 2023.
