Évariste Vital Luminais
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Évariste Vital Luminais (French pronunciation: [evaʁistə vital lyminɛ]; 13 October 1821 – 10 or 15 May 1896[1][2]) was a French painter. He is best known for works depicting early French history and is sometimes called "the painter of the Gauls".
Life and career
He married twice. By his first wife, Anne Foiret, he had a daughter, Esther. After Anne's death in 1874, he remarried in 1876 to one of his pupils, Hélène de Sahuguet d'Amarzit d'Espagnac; she had been married to Claude Durand de Neuville but had been widowed in the War of 1870.[6]
He made his official début at the 1843
Luminais died in Paris at the age of 75 and was buried in the little cemetery in Douadic. His native city of Nantes has a street named for him.[2]
Works
Luminais worked in the
Gauls and other ancient peoples
Luminais played an important part in disseminating the iconography of the Gauls; their popular image, with long hair and winged helmets, was developed by historians at this time as part of an examination of French history. Sometimes called 'the painter of the Gauls',[11] he also depicted other scenes of early medieval history, often clashes between different peoples, such as campaign-hardened Romans in breastplates reinforced with metal battling daring Celts who are bare-chested, with only helmet and shield for protection.[12]
More unusually among historical artists of the time, he also depicted the Franks, whose contribution to French history was then generally underrated in favour of the Gauls.
As was common among historical painters at the time,[13] his paintings contain anachronisms and out of place details. For example, in the 1906 painting of a Gaul returning from the hunt, the clothing is anachronistic and the helmet more a characterisation of the mounted man as a Gaul than a hunting accessory. The long red hair is part of the 19th-century image of the Gaul.[18] His In Sight of Rome shows the same liberty: the shield on the left and the helmets are not realistic.[19] The Celtic incursion into Italy made an early and lasting impression on artists.[20] In depicting the Merovingian Franks, 19th-century painters unaware of archaeological evidence costumed queens in Oriental Germanic fashion,[21] as in Luminais' Merovingian Princess. Luminais' approach focussed more on distancing the image from the present than on evoking a specific era.[8]
Having met Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué, who had published a collection of popular Breton songs, Barzaz Breiz, around 1884 he based on one of the songs his Flight of King Gradlon, depicting the king fleeing on horseback from his city of Ys as it is swallowed by the sea; St. Winwaloe urges him to jettison his only child, Dahut. The art museums in Quimper, Rennes and Nantes hold several sketches for the work. Exhibited at the Salon of 1884, the painting was hailed as a "superb dramatic group, full of life".[22]
The Sons of Clovis II
In 1880 he painted what, according to
The work went through a number of stages of refinement. The first study, Première pensée pour les Énervés de Jumièges, shows the cutting of the tendons and depicts four figures; a second study depicts the raft floating down the river, but has three figures, prefiguring the men's salvation by the monks. The two finished paintings show only the two figures alone on the raft. The version shown at the Salon was sold to Australia under the title The Sons of Clovis II and after being exhibited in various locations including Wallis & Sons' gallery of French paintings in London (1881), the Munich International Exposition (1883), the
Brenne paintings
At his summer studio in Douadic, he painted works reflecting his love of nature and of hunting, such as:
- The Hallali, memories of hunting in Brenne in 1863
- The Two Guardians
- La Folle du Tertre (the madwoman of the mound), based on a local legend
- Hunting Through the Ages, six-panel work for the dining room of his friend Louis Fombelle
- Illustrations for Jules de Vorys' book on Dagobert I, Dagobert en Brenne
Monumental painting
Luminais was one of five artists who collaborated between 1886 and 1889 on a monumental
-
In Sight of Rome
-
Norman pirates in the 9th century
-
Rivals
-
Psyché
-
The Sons of Clovis II (Sydney version)
-
Feeding the hunting dogs
References
- ^ .
- ^ a b "Rue Evariste Luminais", Édouard Pied, Notices sur les rues, ruelles, cours, impasses, quais, ponts, boulevards, places et promenades de la ville de Nantes, Nantes: Dugas, 1906, p. 180 (in French): online at fr.wikisource.
- ^ Michel, Pierre LUMINAIS, Assemblée nationale (in French)
- ^ René, Marie LUMINAIS, Assemblée nationale (in French)
- ^ a b Evariste Luminais (French, 1821–1896): Merovingians Attacking a Wild Dog, ca. 1875–85, Dahesh Museum of Art, retrieved 19 July 2014.
- (in French)
- ^ Photographs of the house, Base Mérimée.
- ^ ISBN 9783700138259, pp. 71–91.
- ISBN 9781566397919, p. 130.
- ISBN 9782738105592, p. 286(in French).
- ^ Annales du Société Académique de Nantes et du Département de la Loire-Inférieure (1900) 250 (in French).
- ISBN 9782070531714, p. 79 (in French).
- ^ ISBN 9780199696710, p. 25.
- ^ "Théophile Gautier, Salon de 1848" (archived from the original) Archived 2008-10-06 at the Wayback Machine (in French).
- ^ Françoise Vallet, De Clovis à Dagobert: Les Mérovingiens, Découvertes Gallimard: Histoire 268, Paris: Gallimard, 1995, p. 29 (in French).
- ^ Effros, Uncovering, p. 331.
- ^ Roger-René Dagobert, Le roi Dagobert: Histoire d'une famille et d'une chanson, 1988, p. 74 (MS Word) (in French).
- ISBN 9782737326226, p. 70 (in French).
- ^ Grimaud, p. 19.
- ^ Eluère, p. 65.
- ISBN 9782235023214, p. 140 (in French).
- (in French).
- ^ a b The Sons of Clovis, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, retrieved 17 July 2014.
- OCLC 229789, p. 234: "la calme horreur qu’elle évoque".
- French Ministry of Culture.
Further information
- Media related to Evariste-Vital Luminais at Wikimedia Commons
- Françoise Daum, Dominique Dussol et al. Evariste Vital Luminais, Peintre des Gaules, 1821–1896. Exhibition catalogue. Carcassonne: Musée des beaux-arts; Charleville-Mézières: Musée de l'Ardenne, 2002. OCLC 225448715. (in French)
- Gilles Brenta and Claude François (script and direction). Le Défilé des toiles. VHS documentary. 52 mins. Brussels: Les Trois petits cochons, 1997. OCLC 490326144. (in French)
- Claude Duty. Les Énervés de Jumièges. Short film, in Claude Duty réalisateur: six films courts. VHS compilation. 72 mins. France: Production A.A.A. / Stellaire Production, 1986–1995. OCLC 415521441. (in French)