Louis Janmot
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
painter and poet.
Early years
Janmot was born in Lyon of CatholicCatholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
parents who were deeply religious. He was extremely moved by the death of his brother in 1823 and his sister's in 1829. He became student at the Royal College of Lyon where he met Frederic Ozanam
Frédéric Ozanam
Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam was a French scholar. He founded with fellow students the Conference of Charity, later known as the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul...
and other followers of his philosophy professor, Abbe Noirot. In 1831 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
de Lyon and a year later, he won the highest honor, the Golden Laurel. In 1833, he came to Paris to take painting lessons from Victor Orsel
Victor Orsel
Victor Orsel was a French painter. A student of Pierre Révoil in Lyon then of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin in Paris, he then spent 7 years at the villa Médicis in Rome , where he worked in the orbit of Overbeck and the Nazarene movement, and copied the Italian 'primitives', leaving his own art with an...
and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. With other Lyon painters, he entered the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. In 1835, he went to Rome with Claudius Lavergne, Jean-Baptiste Frenet and other students and met Hippolyte Flandrin.
After his come back to Lyon in 1836, Janmot would attract the attention of critics of the Salon de Paris in conducting large-scale paintings with religious inspiration such as The Resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain (1839) or Christ in Gethsemane (1840). After 1845, he attracted the interest of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
with his painting Flower of the Fields
Flower of the Fields
Flower of the Fields is an 1845 painting on wood by Lyon artist Louis Janmot. It was acquired in 1893 by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon where it has been conserved....
that allowed him to access to the Salon of 1846. Theophile Gautier
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
was impressed by his Portrait of Lacordaire (1846). But the failure of his Poem of the Soul at the Universal Exhibition of 1855 disappointed him. In December of that year he married Leonie Saint-Paulet, from a noble family in Carpentras
Carpentras
Carpentras is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It stands on the banks of the Auzon...
.
In 1856, Janmot obtained a commission to paint a fresco (since destroyed) representing the Last Supper
Last Supper
The Last Supper is the final meal that, according to Christian belief, Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper provides the scriptural basis for the Eucharist, also known as "communion" or "the Lord's Supper".The First Epistle to the Corinthians is...
for the church of St. Polycarp. Other orders followed, including the decoration of the dome of the Church of St. Francis de Sales and for the town hall that had been renovated by his friend the architect T. Desjardins. He was then appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.
In Paris and Toulon
Surprisingly, Janmot moved to Paris in 1861 after having been promised a commission for the Church of St. Augustine, but this project was abandoned three years later. In experiencing significant family and financial problems, Janmot accepted a professorship at the Dominican School of Arcueil. At that time, in his home in BagneuxBagneux
Bagneux may refer to various communes in France:*Bagneux, Aisne*Bagneux, Allier*Bagneux, Indre*Bagneux, Marne*Bagneux, Meurthe-et-Moselle*Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine*Bagneux-la-Fosse, Aube...
, he made many portraits of the members of his family (only photographs are currently available).
After the birth of her seventh child in August 1870, his wife died in Bagneux. While the Prussian troops approached and occupied his home, he fled to Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
with his stepfather and made landscape paintings. He returned in June of the following year in Paris and led a solitary life. Her house in Bagneux had been looted. In 1878, he produced a fresco in the chapel of the Franciscans in the Holy Land, but this work was followed by any further order.
Faced with family and increasing financial problems, Janmot came to Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
, and despite some orders (new Portrait of Lacordaire (1878, Museum of Versailles), Rosaire (Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...
, 1880), Martyrdom of St. Christine (Solliès-Pont
Solliès-Pont
Solliès-Pont is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.-References:*...
, 1882), he lived a retired life. He finished the second part of the Poem of the Soul that the patron and former industrial Félix Thiollier was willing to publish.
In 1885, Janmot married a former student, Antoinette Currat, and returned in Lyon. He made charcoal drawings on the theme of the underworld
Underworld
The Underworld is a region which is thought to be under the surface of the earth in some religions and in mythologies. It could be a place where the souls of the recently departed go, and in some traditions it is identified with Hell or the realm of death...
, which can be regarded as a kind of continuation of the Poem of the Soul, including Purgatory (1885) and The End of Time (1888). In 1887 was published in Lyon and Paris an over 500-page book entitled Opinion of an artist on art and includes articles previously written by Janmot. He died five years later at the age of 78.
Art style
Janmot has been seen as a transitional figure between RomanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, prefiguring the French part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
; his work was admired by Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon
Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.-Life:...
, and Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.-Childhood and education:...
.
Like Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin
Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin
Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin was a 19th-century French painter. His celebrated 1836 work Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer is in the Louvre.-Early life:...
, another painter from Lyon and student of Ingres, Janmot carried out many commissions for church decorations. In his paintings the immaculate finish of Ingres was combined with a mysticism that has parallels in the work of his contemporaries the Nazarenes
Nazarene movement
The name Nazarene was adopted by a group of early 19th century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art...
and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Poem of the Soul
His most significant work, a cycle of 18 paintings and 16 drawings, with verse, called Poem of the Soul, occupied him for 40 years.| First part : the paintings | Second part : the drawings | |||
| 1. | Génération divine | 19. | Solitude | |
| 2. | Le Passage des âmes | 20. | L’Infini | |
| 3. | L’Ange et la mère | 21. | Rêve de feu | |
| 4. | Le Printemps | 22. | Amour | |
| 5. | Souvenir du ciel | 23. | Adieu | |
| 6. | Le Toit paternel | 24. | Le Doute | |
| 7. | Le Mauvais Sentier | 25. | L’Esprit du Mal | |
| 8. | Cauchemar | 26. | L’Orgie | |
| 9. | Le Grain de blé | 27. | Sans Dieu | |
| 10. | Première Communion | 28. | Le Fantôme | |
| 11. | Virginitas | 29. | Chute fatale | |
| 12. | L’Échelle d’or | 30. | Le Supplice de Mézence | |
| 13. | Rayons de soleil | 31. | Les Générations du Mal | |
| 14. | Sur la Montagne | 32. | Intercession maternelle | |
| 15. | Un Soir | 33. | La Délivrance, ou vision de l’avenir | |
| 16. | Le Vol de l’âme | 34. | Sursum Corda | |
| 17. | L’Idéal | |||
| 18. | Réalité |
Other works
- Self-portrait (1832), musée des beaux-arts de LyonMusée des beaux-arts de LyonThe Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. It is housed near place des Terreaux in a former Benedictine convent of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was restored between 1988 and 1998, and despite these important restoration works it remained open...
- Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers (1840), musée des beaux-arts de Lyon
- Flower of the FieldsFlower of the FieldsFlower of the Fields is an 1845 painting on wood by Lyon artist Louis Janmot. It was acquired in 1893 by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon where it has been conserved....
(1845), musée des beaux-arts de LyonMusée des beaux-arts de LyonThe Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. It is housed near place des Terreaux in a former Benedictine convent of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was restored between 1988 and 1998, and despite these important restoration works it remained open... - L'assomption de la vierge (1845), musée d'art moderne de Saint-Étienne
- Henri Lacordaire, musée national du château de Versailles et de Trianon