Roland Caillaux

French actor (1905–1977)

Roland Caillaux

Born	Roland Raymond Ferdinand Caillaud January 5, 1905
Died	December 3, 1977
Nationality	French
Other names	Roland Caillaux Roland Caipland
Occupation(s)	Actor, artist

Roland Raymond Ferdinand Caillaud (January 5, 1905 – December 3, 1977) – known professionally as Roland Caillaux, and sometimes using the pseudonym Roland Caipland – was a French actor and artist. He is known for acting in several French films in the 1920s and 1930s, and for producing and publishing homoerotic illustrations in the mid 20th century.

Art

Caillaux has long been best known for illustrating 20 lithographies pour un livre que j'ai lu (20 lithographs for a book I read), which accompanied a text attributed to Jean Genet with images of male homosexuality, including explicit sexual activity. The book was published in April 1945, without the name of the author, the publisher or place of publication, with a print run of only 115 copies.

In this text, there are excerpts, however variants, of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs and The Parade, poems published by Marc Barbezat in 1948 in a collection entitled Poems and signed this once Jean Genet (Editions L'Arbalète).^[1]

Roland Caillaud's studio was located on Rue Boulard in the 14th arrondissement of Paris; it is there, between 1944 and 1945, that Jean Genet met the painter through model Édouard Dermit.^[2]

Nicole Canet, who has rediscovered many of Caillaud's drawings, reports that he inherited money from his parents and lived as an annuitant^{[clarification needed]} after having been an actor. He lived at 5 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In a memoir, François Sentein says that when he traveled by bicycle to Montpensier street where Jean Cocteau lived, he kept his bicycle pump in his hand, for fear of it being stolen.^[3]

Acting

Under the name Roland Caillaux, he appeared in the following films:

1924 : La Galerie des monstres by Jaque Catelain
1928 : Tire-au-flanc by Jean Renoir : the sergeant
1929 : Figaro by Tony Lekain and Gaston Ravel : Grippe-Soleil
1929 : Le Ruisseau by René Hervil
1930 : Soyons gais by Arthur Robison : Bruce
1930 : Le masque d'Hollywood by Clarence G. Badger and John Daumery : Bing
1932 : Baroud by Rex Ingram and Alice Terry : André Duval, a sergeant of Spahis
1932 : That Scoundrel Morin by Georges Lacombe
1934 : Itto by Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein : Lieutenant Jean Dumontier

He performed in the following stage plays:

1929: La rouille by Vladimir Kirchon and Andreï Ouspenski, Théâtre de l'Avenue
1930 : Juliette ou La clé des songes by Georges Neveux, Théâtre de l'Avenue
1930 : La Passion by Edmond Haraucourt, Comédie-Française

Paintings, drawings, illustrations

Raymond Voinquel en costume de marin, 30 x 23 cm, 1931
Portrait de Christian Bérard dans l'atelier, 22 x 18 cm, 1937
Gentilhomme de la Renaissance, aquarelle, 64 x 48 cm, 1937
Jeune Femme à l’orientale, 72 x 50 cm, 1938
Femme du désert, huile, 114 x 87 cm, 1939
Village en bord de mer, huile, 54 x 81 cm, 1943
Portrait d’adolescent, mine de plomb, 46 x 31 cm, 1944
[frontispice] Mademoiselle de Murville de Roger Peyrefitte, éditions Jean Vigneau, 1947
Le Pot ancien, huile, 81 x 65 cm, s.d.
Verlaine et Rimbaud, fusain, 31 x 24 cm, s.d.

Some drawings seem to have been signed by the pseudonym Roland Caipland

Exposure(s)

1933, Paris, Galerie des Quatre-Chemins

References

^ Albert Dichy, Jean Genet, essai de chronologie, 1910-1944, Bibliothèque de littérature contemporaine, IMEC, 1988.
^ Selon le témoignage d'Albert Dichy d'après Patrick Cardon, préface à la réédition de 20 lithographies pour un livre que j'ai lu, Lille, Question de genre/Cahier Gay Kitch Camp n°33, 1996
^ In Minutes d'une autre année, 1945, Paris, Le Promeneur, 2003 ISBN 978-2-07076621-5