Exposition “Louis Janmot. Le Poème de l’âme”
12 septembre 2023 – 7 janvier 2024 – Musée d’Orsay
https://bit.ly/JanmotPoemeAme
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Commencé à Rome en 1835 et poursuivi jusqu’en 1881, Le Poème de l’âme est le grand œuvre de l’artiste lyonnais Louis Janmot (1814-1892), à la fois pictural et littéraire. Il illustre en 34 compositions accompagnées d’un long poème le parcours initiatique d’une âme sur la Terre. Formé de deux cycles respectivement composés de 18 peintures et de 16 grands dessins, il fut qualifié par Henri Focillon, directeur du musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon de 1913 à 1924, “d’ensemble le plus remarquable, le plus cohérent et le plus étrange du spiritualisme romantique”.
Découvrez dans cette vidéo les deux commissaires, Servane Dargnies-de Vitry, conservatrice Peinture au musée d’Orsay et Stéphane Paccoud, conservateur en chef chargé des peintures et sculptures du XIXe siècle au musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon vous présenter l’exposition.
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Exhibition “Louis Janmot. The Poem of the Soul”
September 12th, 2023 – January 07th, 2024 – Musée d’Orsay
https://bit.ly/JanmotPoemSoul
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Begun in Rome in 1835 and completed in 1881, The Poem of the Soul is the crowning achievement of the Lyonese artist Louis Janmot (1814-1892), a pictorial and literary work all in one. In 34 compositions accompanied by a long poem, it illustrates a soul’s initiatory journey on Earth. Comprising two cycles respectively composed of 18 paintings and 16 large-format drawings, Henri Focillon, director of Lyon Museum of Fine Arts from 1913 to 1924, described it as “Romantic spiritualism’s most remarkable, most coherent and strangest ensemble”.
In this video, the two curators, Servane Dargnies-de Vitry, curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay, and Stéphane Paccoud, head curator of 19th-century paintings and sculptures at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, present the exhibition.
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Une production musée d’Orsay / Direction du numérique
Production déléguée : YouBLive
Réalisation : Marie Cécile Lucas
For the Musée d’Orsay, it’s the opportunity to also showcase the slightly lesser-known and nonetheless very significant and very interesting artists. The Poem of the Soul by Louis Janmot is a very special work of its time, which was really very original, because it is a cycle of work. It spans over 34 compositions.
It’s also a poem. For us it was an opportunity to rediscover this artist to present this work in particular by really concentrating on this work, to discover all of its uniqueness and originality. To take a closer look at this venture which was slightly unusual for Janmot
To write the story of a soul in painting. We immediately thought that the narrative side of The Poem of the Soul needed to be showcased. It’s really a story that is told through paintings. The visitor initially discovers the first cycle of The Poem of the Soul
Which was painted by Janmot in oil on canvas between 1835 and 1854, the date when he was shown for the first time in Lyon, then in Paris. For the second cycle, Louis Janmot made a radical change, abandoning painting for drawing. It’s important to note, however, that these are not preparatory drawings or studies,
But the finished works themselves. Impressively, these large sheets are similar in format to the paintings. So these are extremely impressive large-scale charcoal drawings, sometimes enhanced with colored paper. It’s quite complex technically and also in terms of execution. It’s a choice he no doubt made
Because he thought he’d be able to go faster in composing this set than the time it had taken him to conceive the first cycle. But this is a miscalculation, since in the end, he’ll spend more time on this second cycle than he did on the first. Regarding the scenographic choices,
We have this route for the two cycles of The Poem of the Soul, with steles which actually separate each of the paintings. We also really wanted to mark this progression through scenography which separated each painting while giving continuity. We’re dealing with a cycle.
These aren’t separate paintings, you really need to follow the story in order to go from one to another. And in fact, it’s a work which is complete. Of course, we can see a relevance between one painting in relation to another, but in fact you have to have seen everything,
Discovered everything, to completely understand the work. We wanted to create five cabinets, a bit of depth on the work of Janmot, five themed cabinets which allow us to accurately present where Janmot places in his time between neoclassicism, romance, symbolism and possibly beyond. So through five cabinets which present other works, by other artists,
Which allow us to forge links between the works of The Poem of the Soul and these other artists, who are a bit like moments of pause in the exhibition, where we can even stop outside the cycles of The Poem of the Soul to go deeper. For example, we begin with a cabinet
Which we’ve named “A pictorial and illustrated saga”. The Poem of the Soul didn’t start from a commission. It’s genuinely an uncommissioned work, which is astonishing for such an undertaking, and it wasn’t fitted for a specific place, or any specific architecture. We wanted to mention other pictorial cycles
Which were precisely built and specified to fit into places. For us it’s more the alliance between the painting and the poetry which guided its conception. So, we’re displaying other books, like for example the illuminated books by William Blake. The second cabinet is dedicated to the figure of the soul and the guardian angel.
Here again, our idea was to show how artists in Janmot’s time represented the soul. Janmot chose to use a young boy. But you have the winged figures, you have some artists who will represent the immateriality of the soul by a sort of flow escaping from a body at the moment of death.
You have the wings that we will see again quite a lot which will often confuse the image of the soul with the guardian angel. Here for example, in this canvas by Prud’hon, the way that the artist has represented a soul which is slipping towards the sky or even in the illustrations
In The Divine Comedy of Dante by Flaxman. We have quite a few references and that’s how we wanted to anchor Janmot into a much more extensive collection of references. We’re here in front of a set of nine canvasses which are like the heart of the first cycle of The Poem of the Soul.
And so we see the soul which is depicted as a young boy who is dressed in pink and accompanied by his soul mate, a young girl, a young child dressed in a white dress. We see them walking around going from scene to scene, from painting to painting, together at the family home,
The paternal home, in this work where they’re watching the storm through a window. The young boy is very, very drawn to what is outside and to this storm which fascinates him, which could indeed be a reference to the political events of the year of 1848, the revolution of 1848,
While the young female invites him instead to come sit around the family table to listen to the grandmother who comes, like every evening, to read a passage from the Bible. In fact, all this sub-text, all these elements that we do not forcibly have from looking at the painting,
We know them through Janmot’s verses since Janmot has accompanied each of his paintings with poems in verse which are an absolutely indispensable correlation to the discovery of the work in his collection. The written poem has the purpose to always announce the tragic side of The Poem of the Soul
And the tragic side of human existence. While it might feel like we are in front of rather happy, rather joyous, rather naive scenes, when we read the poem while looking at a work, very often the poem is the bringer of the fatality, of death, herald of the fatality of misfortune.
For example, in L’Ange et la mère we have the mother who is coddling her child and the guardian angel who is turning towards the sky in prayer. It’s a very gentle scene, of true tranquillity and peace. And in fact, in the poem we have
The words that the angel is saying to the sky, which are very harsh, and actually declaring all the sufferings that the soul will have to endure on Earth. It’s a very interesting relationship between the text and the image. In Rayons de soleil, the poem says, I’ll quote an extract:
“Dance, dance, joyful troops before from these rough hands, the pain does not touch nor furrow your brows, today so serene. Before his morose fingers, winter has withered the roses. The lawn under your feet trampled, before the woods its foliage have seen their shade replaced by a sad and desolate day.”
We have these young women and this young man who are dancing at sunset and at the same time, this poem reminds them of their inevitable destiny. So, it’s this relationship between the writing and the image. I would mention Chute fatale, which sees the hero fall to the bottom of a precipice.
We have a very, very terrifying chasm in the foreground. And the main character from The Poem of the Soul is falling. And it’s a very allegorical picture, very complicated, with three words written in the centre of the picture which, personally, fascinate me and left me fascinated
From the moment I set eyes on this picture. “Fatality, revolt, materiality”, it’s very obscure and I think we can sense the 19th century context in this picture.