Introduction
Auguste Baillayre (1879, Eastern Pyrenees – 1961, Bucharest) was a painter from France. He was a professor at Ecolle de Belle Arte of Chişinău and the first director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chişinău.
Biography
Auguste Baillayre was born in 1879 in France (Eastern Pyrenees) where he spent his childhood and his adolescence in Georgia (1885–1898). He studied then in Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and Grenoble and became an important artistic personality in Chişinău (1918–1943). He was a professor at the Chişinău Art School. Several of his works are kept at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chişinău, whose first director he was in 1939.
The Post of Moldova issued, on May 1, 2009, its 9th postal stationery cover with a preprinted stamp commemorating the 130th anniversary of Auguste Baillayre. A portrait of the painter appears on the stamp and two of his works, "Still Life with Fish" (1927) and "Self Portrait with Masks" (1945), are also reproduced on the left on the envelope.