Chelles, by Léon Augustin Lhermitte

Today we continue our weeklong look at the life and art of Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844 – 1925). 

This July marks the 170^th birthday of the artist, who is currently represented in museums around the world.  His work can be found in Amsterdam, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Florence, Montreal, Moscow, Paris, Rheims, and Washington, DC.  Amazingly, outside of academia and a handful of aesthetes, he is largely forgotten.

L'hermitte showed artistic talent as a boy and his upbringing in the rural village of Mont Saiint-Père in Picardie provided him with the subjects and landscapes that would become the staples of his oeuvre. In 1863 left his home for the Petit Ecole in Paris where he studied with Horace Lecocq de Boisbaudran (1838-1912).  He would also form a life-long friendship with Jean Charles Cazin (1840-1901), and became acquainted with celebrated artists Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).  He made his debut at the Salon of 1864, where his charcoal drawings revealed that he had a sure touch in depicting the natural world. His first work, Bords de Marne près d'Alfort, caused a sensation, and L'hermitte gained a reputation for being as capable with oils as with pastel and charcoal.

He would win many honors, including the Legion of Honour in 1884, where he was made an officer in 1894 and a commander in 1911. He was elected a member of the Institute in 1905. In 1890 he was one of the founding members of the Société National des Beaux-Arts, of which he was later elected Vice-President.

Lhermitte’s graphic work became more popular after as he exhibited regularly at the Salon, though he still hadn’t attained his desired level of success.  That changed when one of his paintings, Paying the Harvesters (1882), was purchased by the state and hung in the Luxembourg museum before being transferred to the Hotel de Ville at Chateau-Thierry.  This led to many commissions and established Lhermitte as an artist of rustic life.  As scholar Gabriel Weisberg observed:  to Lhermitte, rustic activity embodied dignity, for he believed workers in the fields seldom complained … Bolstering these ways of representing workers were the locales in which Lhermitte places his figures.  The countryside was seldom dour or depressing, the atmosphere often appeared light and airy … and the environment seemed spacious.

Lhermitte was called the singer of wheat by critics and devotees, but he was also adept at interior scenes of peasant life at home, often emphasizing the effects of light in his pictures.  He also concentrated on images of mother and child, as well as women in domestic scenes, such as doing laundry along the Marne.  In these cases, Lhermitte combined each of his interests to create his compositions.   

In today’s picture, Lhermitte once again creates an almost mystical sense of place with a few loose strokes of pastel.  This piece, 13x17, conveys the heavy shadows and suggestive lighting of early dawn or late dusk; the light renders the tree branches indistinct and vague, while the landscape reflected on the water is almost indistinguishable from the landscape itself.

And there, in the corner, almost as if Lhermitte was purposely recreating something pinging the corner of our eye, we see a figure emerge from the water.  It takes a moment – perhaps one blink – to confirm that it is the figure of a woman, escaping into the woodland like a mythical figure.

Without being able to see it in my hand, I believe the paper is blue-toned, which allowed Lhermitte to create the distant mountains and a reflected sky with nothing more than blank space.  The use of white chalk on the water, of course, creates a sense of movement and a dappling effect.

This is no grand scene from a history painting – it is not Dante and Beatrice or the Death of Caesar.  No, this is, instead, the moment that passes by all to swiftly, and remains locked in our memory.  If yesterday Lhermitte managed to make us know a group of women just by their body language, with this picture he recreates one of those passing moments that remain, in some uncanny sense, eternal.

More Lhermette tomorrow!

Au Lavoir (The Washhouse), by Léon Augustin Lhermitte

After a brief hiatus, The Jade Sphinx returns with a weeklong look at artist Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844 – 1925).  Lhermitte was a French painter and etcher who primarily depicted rural scenes and peasant workers.  He was born in Mont-Saint-Père, and was student of Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1838-1912).  Lhermitte gained recognition after his show in the Paris Salon in 1864.  His many awards include the French Legion of Honour (1884) and the Grand Prize at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. Lhermitte died in Paris in 1925.

Lhermitte lived in the Aisne until he was about 20, developing a deep and abiding love of rural life, which became the focus of his work – often creating images of the work and daily life in the countryside of his time.

He came from a humble family and for many years earned his living with minor engraving work in France and England, before winning recognition at the Salon from 1874. Fame came after 1880, when the artist successively entered several large paintings depicting the life and people of his native village of Mont-Saint-Père. His pictures The Cabaret in 1881, Paying the Harvesters in 1882, and The Harvest in 1883, used the same figures which can be identified from one painting to another.

Though many 19^th Century artists relied on imagery introduced by earlier generations of painters, they also re-envisioned these older themes by executing them with progressive techniques.  Lhermitte took the recognized imagery of peasant and rural life and revitalized these themes by using more contemporary media, such as pastels.  His impact was felt on artists of the time -- Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) who wrote that, If every month Le Monde llustré published one of his compositions … it would be a great pleasure for me to be able to follow it.  It is certain that for years I have not seen anything as beautiful as this scene by Lhermitte … I am too preoccupied by Lhermitte this evening to be able to talk of other things.

Lhermitte’s passion for the rural landscape was shared by fellow-artists and modern audiences alike, and his work helped perpetuate the image of rural life and landscape into the 20^th Century.    

In today’s picture, Au Lavoir (The Washhouse), we see Lhermette’s masterful command of the rural idiom.  This is charcoal and pastel on paper (19x24), and the artist creates a touching and homey scene with these basic materials.  Four women are doing the chore of cleaning clothes for their families – and from the poses of women, it is clear that this is a regular ritual.  The women position themselves to reduce the wear-and-tear on themselves, and they look at one-another to exchange the latest gossip. 

For this picture, Lhermette’s worked on beige-toned paper, allowing the paper itself to create the clay-colored background of the earth and the stones of the cistern.  The stones are mostly suggested, rather than slavishly depicted, and the trees and sod of the rolling hillside are a few deft touches of charcoal and pastel. 

Lhermette uses white chalk to create a little pathway from the countryside to the cistern, creating a distinctive social space within the countryside.  The Washhouse of Lhermette’s imagination is a social square of the simplest sort, where housework, gossip and simple country connections take place.

What is amazing about this piece is that with these component parts, Lhermette creates a whole life.  We know these women, and their lives, and the day-to-day  routines on which they run.  It is a remarkably human and subtle piece of work.

More Lhermette tomorrow!