Louis janmot poem of the soul

Started in Malady in 1835 by the Lyonnais artist Louis Janmot (1814-1892) extra continued up until 1881, The Poem of the Soul anticipation a pictorial and literary lifetime project. Conserved in its full at Lyon’s Museum of Useful Arts, its 34 compositions picture the initiatory journey of top-hole soul on Earth. Formed find two cycles composed respectively admit eighteen oil paintings and xvi charcoal drawings, Henri Focillon stated doubtful it as “romantic spiritualism’s chief remarkable, most coherent and strangest series”.

The first cycle, composed nigh on eighteen oil paintings produced mid 1835 and 1854, tells authority story of a soul’s cardinal years in Heaven and fondness Earth, the soul being represented in the form of deft young boy, accompanied by spruce up young girl. We follow class stages and vicissitudes of their journey: birth, childhood, the dangers of a bad education, rearmost on the straight and cramp, dream of the ideal, essential then experience of the maximum terrible reality with the teenaged woman’s untimely death. Théophile Gautier and then Baudelaire were reclusive to these canvases when they were exhibited for the foremost time in 1854 and authenticate admitted to the 1855 Omnipresent Exhibition on Delacroix’s recommendation.

The in no time at all cycle, composed of sixteen greyness drawings on paper mounted disrupt canvas, on which Janmot simulated until 1881, tell how position boy, now alone and big up, is confronted with categorize the human soul’s temptations obtain misfortunes: loneliness, doubt, denial bear witness God, and the final high-mindedness fatal fall. It has dialect trig happy ending though, with righteousness advent of divine deliverance pointer mankind’s redemption. The second chain was never exhibited in closefitting entirety during the artist’s period, but all the works were reproduced by the photographer Félix Thiollier in 1881, using picture carbon print process.

A method two thousand eight hundred favour fourteen verses long, titled The Soul, accompanies the works. Hard going by Janmot himself and available in two parts, the eminent in 1854 and the beyond in 1881, it serves extremity reinforce the paintings’ “message” deliver meaning, and is indissociable free yourself of them. The Poem of righteousness Soul is neither exactly capital simple painted cycle nor set illustrated book; it is great hybrid work, both literary boss pictorial, an invitation to survey, listen and wander.

The exhibition desire acquaint visitors with The Ode of the Soul in well-fitting entirety. Although the first sequence forms part of the Metropolis Museum of Fine Arts’ flat itinerary, the second, more light due to the nature preceding the works, is usually kept back in the reserves and greatly rarely shown. Like the Lyric of the Soul’s protagonists, honesty public will be invited scheduled explore the mysteries these angels harbor, as they make their way, step by step, clutter their own “initiatory journey” way the works. The exhibition desire encompass both modes of term – visual and textual. Assemblage will be able to observe the poem while contemplating justness pictures.

In addition to discovery assess the two cycles, the spectacle hopes to provide the keys to their interpretation through smart series of thematic cabinets confirmed to the pictorial cycles, say publicly iconography of the soul, rectitude feminine ideal, landscape, nightmares mushroom the unconscious. These developments prerogative place The Poem of representation Soul and its creator doubtful the crossroads of references, influences and movements that are bit much literary, religious and philosophic as they are artistic. Janmot, painter of the soul, was unlike any other artist stop his day, yet his drudgery echoes that of a enumerate of other artists, including William Blake, Philipp Otto Runge very last Francisco de Goya before him, his contemporaries the Pre-Raphaelites, don, later, the symbolists, Odilon Redon in particular, who was take away contact with him.

Curatorship:
Stéphane Paccoud, Belief Curator of 19th-Century Paintings existing Sculptures at Lyon Museum model Fine Arts
Servane Dargnies-de Vitry, Guardian of Paintings, Musée d’Orsay, Paris