Item Details:

LA PLACE DE LA REPUBLIQUE

LOUIS ABEL-TRUCHET

IMPRESSIONISM,

Oil Painting on Canvas

circa 1880

Size: 21.8 x 18.5 in; 55.25 x 46.99 cm

Signed: Recto, lower left

Marcel-Lenoir’s highly stylized Symbolist works came before the turn of the 20th century. He participated in the Salons de Rose-Croix, which began in 1892. This group of artists used Catholic symbolism and symbols from the occult in their paintings. The Salons de la Rose-Croix were conceived and presented by Péladan as gestes esthétiques, it was to be synthesis of the visual arts, literature and music. He also produced beautiful lithographs including one published by l’Estampe Moderne. Marcel Lenoir died in 1931 at the age of 59 in Montricoux. He left almost 700 paintings and drawings. His work is collected in the museums of Vienna and the Musée Marcel-Lenoir in Montauban. Originally from Montauban, Jules Oury, who later adopted the pseudonym Marcel-Lenoir, moved to Paris in 1889 at the age of seventeen. Strongly encouraged by his father, a goldsmith, to develop his artistic talents, he briefly studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and then at the École des Beaux-Arts. He quickly turned away from goldsmithing to concentrate on painting. The art of the French and Italian primitives that he discovered in the Louvre left a deep impression on him. A great fan of Pierre Puvis de Chavanne, whose encouragement he received, he was naturally attracted by the symbolist nebula and more particularly by the esoteric universe of the Rose+Croix. A hard worker with an innate talent for color and composition, Marcel-Lenoir produced a fertile, constantly evolving work. He made several stylistic turns, always in a modern and poetic aesthetic, and thus achieved a formidable synthesis of the pictorial innovations of his time. Remaining faithful to massive forms and vivid colors, he was interested in a variety of subjects, both secular and mystical, and participated in the revival of religious painting in the aftermath of the First World War.