Jeanne Jacquemin (Marie-Jeanne Boyer) was a French artist associated with the Symbolist movement. She was born on 13 August 1863 in Paris and died in Paris in 1938. She married Édouard Jacquemin, but later left him to live with the engraver Auguste Lauzet, a friend of Vincent Van Gogh.

Personal life

She married Édouard Paul Félicien Jacquemin, a member of Paul Verlaine's circle, on December 13, 1881. Édouard ultimately abandoned her, and some time later she moved in with the engraver August-Marie Lauzet. Details of her personal life were mired in controversy and misinformation during her lifetime. Leslie Stewart Curtis has claimed that, "If Jacquemin and her art have been largely forgotten, it is no doubt related to the infamy she had acquired among her art world contemporaries. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that she was consciously expunged from written records." However, this can also be attributed, in part, to the relatively scarcity of her surviving works.

Career

Information about her artistic training remains unclear. She has been linked to the little-known artists Léonide Josephine Leblanc,

Jean-Charles Cazin Jean-Charles Cazin (25 May 1840 – 17 March 1901) was a French landscapist, museum curator and ceramicist. Biography The son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin (1788–1864), he was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais. After studying in France, ...

, Edouard Pils, and

Léon Bonnat Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat (20 June 1833 – 8 September 1922) was a French painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Early life Bonnat was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Ma ...

. Jacquemin exhibited approximately 40 works during her lifetime, most of which were executed in pastel and few of which are extant today. She exhibited at

Le Barc de Boutteville The art gallery of Le Barc de Boutteville, at 47 Rue le Peletier, Rue Le Peletier, 9th arrondissement, was one of the few places in Paris in the 1890s where young artists were welcome to present their work to the public, in the years after the deat ...

gallery in Paris between 1892 and 1897, at the Impressionist and Symbolist exhibitions, at the Salon de La Plume and the galerie Bing. In Brussels,

Octave Maus Octave Maus (12 June 1856 – 26 November 1919) was a Belgian art critic, writer and lawyer. Maus worked with fellow writer/lawyer Edmond Picard, and they together with Victor Arnould and Eugène Robert founded the weekly '' L'Art moderne'' ...

invited her to exhibit at the Salon des XX. During her time there, she associated with

Georges Rodenbach Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach (16 July 1855 – 25 December 1898) was a Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist. Biography Georges Rodenbach was born in Tournai to a French mother and a German father from the Rhineland (Andernach). He was ...

. At Le Barc de Boutteville, she became affiliated with Alfred Vallette and Remy du Gourmont.

Work

Jacquemin's art was influenced by

Puvis de Chavannes Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beau ...

, Edward Burne-Jones,

Odilon Redon Odilon Redon (born Bertrand Redon; ; 20 April 18406 July 1916) was a French Symbolism (arts), symbolist painter, printmaker, Drawing, draughtsman and pastellist. Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he ...

, and

Gustave Moreau Gustave Moreau (; 6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence".Cassou, Jean. 1979. ''The Concise Encyclopedia of Symbolism.' ...

. Describing the works she exhibited in the 1894 "Peintres Impressionistes et Symbolistes" exhibition at

, the critic René Barjean wrote that "the emotional intensity of the faces explored by Madame Jeanne Jacquemin enchants and will always enchant the poets." Her work, like that of her Symbolist contemporaries, addresses mysticism, dream states, nature, and ''la douleur,'' or pain. The particular brand of isolation and otherworldliness found in her works coincides with an ambivalent figuration of gender. Her treatment of the "female androgyne" has been associated with the efforts of female Symbolist artists to explore psychic states "not confined to masculine sensibilities," but that do not necessarily put forward a counter-model of "essentialized female sensibility." Her portrait of ''Saint Georges'', for example, has been interpreted by some as a self-portrait, due in part to the figure's delicate facial features and long red hair. Her works include: * ''La Douloureuse et glorieuse couronne'' (''The Crown of Thorns'') (pastel on paper, 1892, private collection, Paris) * ''Le Coeur d'eau'' (pastel on paper, 1892, Musée de Folklore at Maison Tournaisienne) * ''Christ à la couronne d'épines'' (lithograph published in ''Le Courrier Français'', Jun 23, 1895) * ''Saint Georges'' (color lithograph published in ''L'Éstampe modern'' no. 11, 1898) * ''Le Temps passe'' or "Rêverie" (alternately titled ''Daydream, Mélancolie,'' and ''Mysteriosa''), a signed worm that has been included in several Symbolist exhibitions in recent decades, Paris, collection Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond. * ''Saint Georges'' (pastel on paper) 1892, Paris, collection Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond.

References

Bibliography

Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, "Jeanne Jacquemin", ''Les Peintres de l'âme. Le symbolisme idéaliste en France'', Anvers, Pandora, 1999. Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, "Jeanne Jacquemin, peintre et égérie symboliste", ''Revue de l'art'', 2003, 3, p. 57-78. Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, "Jeanne Jacquemin", ''Painters of the soul. Symbolism in France'', Exh. cat. Tampere, 2007. Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, "Un chef d'oeuvre retrouvé, Le Coeur de l'eau de Jeanne Jacquemin, ''La Tribune de l'art'', 9 décembre 2014.

External links

Jeanne Jacquemin's webpage

Collection of Jeanne Jacquemin's works
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacquemin, Jeanne French Symbolist painters 19th-century French painters 20th-century French painters 19th-century French engravers 1863 births 1938 deaths Painters from Paris 20th-century French women artists 19th-century French women artists Women engravers French women printmakers