Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

Bio

The intellectual pre-occupations which produced the symbolist movement provide a counterpoint to the parallel advances of the post-impressionist style of Vuillard and Bonnard and the Fauves of the first decade of this century. Alphonse Osbert, Maurice Denis, Aman Jean, Clairin, Maxence and the youthful Lévy-Dhurmer – the “painters of the soul” – exemplify a different aspect of symbolist expression which, by the First World War seems out of touch with contemporary artistic trends. Nonetheless, the Belgian Fernand Khnopf’s haunting images and enigmatic creations remain highly sought after, as does the work of Gustav Klimt, who responded to many of the same influences as his French counterparts. They all trained in the Academic tradition but rejected it for highly individualist styles which are instantly recognizable today. Khnopff, Aman-Jean, L. W. Hawkins and Osbert, disciples of the Rose-Croix movement founded in Belgium, remain Lévy-Dhurmer’s closest artistic link. His comparative youth meant that he continued their traditions even into the second half of the twentieth century. His successes not only included large scale paintings in oils, but more intimate works in pastel and some highly perceptive portraits. The latter include his well-known Portrait of Rodenbach, an icon of symbolist portraiture (Paris, Musée de l’Art Moderne).

The earliest influences on Lévy-Dhurmer were historical; his first works were compared to paintings from the Florentine renaissance and may well have been inspired by a trip to Italy in 1895. Among these may be cited his Medusa and Circé and other images that pay tribute to the sinuous forms of Botticelli’s Venus and her attendants. The artist made no effort to mimic Quattrocento painting styles, however, and his technique remained firmly rooted in post-impressionism, with obvious references to the late symbolist style of Henri Fantin-Latour. His choice of religious images such as the ethereal Adam and Eve of 1900 does not indicate a positive attachment to spirituality but rather an excuse to reinterpret an ancient subject. At the same time, one of his most dramatic works, La Bourrasque (the gust of wind), which he painted for the first time in 1896 and treated in different formats in both oils and pastels, owes nothing to the past. It is a brilliant and disturbing image of a woman caught in a sudden storm: she holds her hands to her ears, her mouth open in shock and terror while the autumn leaves are swept past. His first teachers, Collin, Viot and Wallet seem to have left only a modest legacy in his subsequent work; neither does he seem to owe much to the giants of academic symbolism of the last half of the century, Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau.

In 1901 he traveled to Spain and thence to Holland and Brittany, where Gauguin had first idealized the Breton peasant in raw color, inspiring both Maurice Denis and Albert Besnard. Lévy-Dhurmer, however, preferred a more refined technique and his portrayal of Breton peasant life may be better compared to the works of Bastien-Lepage and Dagnan-Bouveret. His next journey, to Morocco, further broadened his horizons and a hint of Orientalist fantasy frequently reoccurs in much of his subsequent work. Traveling in North Africa and then Turkey he made greater use of pastels, easier to carry and use when traveling, and they remained a favored medium throughout his subsequent career. In the first decade of the century he produced much of his best work, notably Les Aveugles de Tanger, 1901 (Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne), and the Mére Bretonne (Musée de Brest).

His attempts to translate the aural images of musical idiom into two dimensional expression on canvas was an innovative contribution to symbolist art. While Fantin-Latour had been inspired by the works of Wagner (among others), Lévy-Dhurmer’s response and interpretation is less textual. His first such essay was the triptych in honor of Beethoven (Paris, Musée du Petit Palais), of which L’Appasionata is particularly notable, while he also painted a Swan Lake inspired by Tchaikovsky (1905), and Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune after Debussy, which was exhibited at the Salon de la Societé Nationale of 1909.