Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (30 September 1865 – 24 September 1953) was a French artist and a leading exponent of fin-de-siècle

Symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...

and

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

. His works include paintings, drawings, ceramics, furniture and interior design.

Early life

Born Lucien Lévy to a

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish family in

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

French Algeria French Algeria ( until 1839, then afterwards; unofficially ; ), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of History of Algeria, Algerian history when the country was a colony and later an integral part of France. French rule lasted until ...

in 1865, he began studying

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

and

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

at the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in 1879. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882 where he showed a small ceramic plaque. In 1887 Lévy began making his living near

Cannes Cannes (, ; , ; ) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions Internatio ...

in southern France, overseeing the decoration of

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

. From 1886 to 1895 he worked as a ceramic decorator and then as artistic director of the studio of

Clément Massier Clement or Clément may refer to: People * Clement (name), a given name and surname * Saint Clement (disambiguation)#People Places * Clément, French Guiana, a town * Clement, Missouri, U.S. * Clement Township, Michigan, U.S. * Clement's P ...

. Around 1892 he signed his first pieces of ceramics, which were influenced by

Islamic Art Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslims, Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across ...

. In 1895 he left for Paris to begin a career in painting; around this time he visited

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and was further influenced by art of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

Career

In 1896 he exhibited his first

pastel A pastel () is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder (material), binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are ...

s and paintings under the name Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer; he had added the last two syllables of his mother's maiden name (Goldhurmer), likely to differentiate himself from other people named Lévy. His paintings soon became popular with the public and among fellow artists as well. He earned high praise for the academic attention to detail with which he captured figures lost in a

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, ...

haze of melancholy, contrasted with bright

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

colouration. His portrait of writer

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 w ...

is perhaps the most striking example of this strange and extraordinary synergy. After 1901 Lévy-Dhurmer moved away from expressly Symbolist content, incorporating more

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

s into his work because of his travels in Europe and North Africa. He continued to draw inspiration from music and attempted to capture works of great composers such as

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

in painted form.

Personal life

In 1914 Lévy-Dhurmer married Emmy Fournier, who had been an editor of the early feminist newspaper '' La Fronde''. By this time he was working primarily on landscapes, both oil and pastel, in a style similar to Whistler and

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

Death

Lévy-Dhurmer died in

Le Vésinet Le Vésinet () is a suburban Communes of France, commune in the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region in north-central France. It is a part of the affluent outer suburbs of western Paris, from ...

in 1953.

Works

* ''La Sorcière'', 1897, pastel on paper, 61 x 46 cm, Paris : Musée d’Orsay. * ''Le Silence'', 1895, pastel, 54 x 29 cm, Paris : Musée d'Orsay. * ''Les aveugles à Tanger'', 1901, pastel on paper, 50 x 70 cm, Paris : Musée d’Orsay. * ''L’explorateur perdu'', 1896, pastel on paper, 59 x 38 cm, Paris : Musée d’Orsay. * ''Méduse'', 1897, Pastel and charcoal on paper, 59 x 40 cm, Paris : Musée d’Orsay. * ''Portrait de

'', ca. 1895, pastel on paper, 36 x 55 cm, signed : "''L. Lévy-Dhurmer''", Paris : Musée d'Orsay. * ''Portrait de

Pierre Loti Pierre Loti (; pseudonym of Louis Marie-Julien Viaud ; 14 January 1850 – 10 June 1923) was a French naval officer and novelist, known for his exotic novels and short stories.This article is derived largely from the ''Encyclopædia Britannica Ele ...

'' or ''Fantôme d'Orient'', 1896, pastel, 42,5 x 56,5 cm, Bayonne : Musée basque. * ''Feux d'artifice à Venise'', s.d., pastel, 87,5 x 53,8 cm, Paris : Musée du Petit Palais * ''Torse de femme vue de face'', s.d., pastel, 80 x 55 cm, Paris : Musée du Petit Palais. * ''Torse de femme vue de dos'', s.d., pastel, 80 x 43,5 cm, Paris : Musée du Petit Palais. * ''Le Marocain'' ou ''Le Fanatique'', ca. 1900, oil on canvas, 64,5 x 50 cm, Paris : musée du Quai Branly, * ''Notre Dame de Penmarc'h'', 1896, oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm, signed and dated : "''L. Lévy-Dhurmer / 1896''", Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper. * ''Eve'', 1896, pastel and gouache, 49 x 46 cm, private collection. * ''Bourrasque'', ca. 1896, pastel on paper, 40 x 48 cm, Paris : private collection. * ''La mort d'Atala'', 1801,

porcelain painting China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects, such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porce ...

, 41 x 60 cm, Maison de Chateaubriand * ''Alfred-Philippe Roll (1847-1919)'', 1913, pastel on paper, 153,4 x 95 cm (1913), Musée de l’Histoire de France (Versailles) * ''Les Mères pendant la guerre : douze compositions inédites'', Paris : Devambez, 1917, Paris : Musée d’histoire contemporaine. Music : * ''Les roses d'Ispahan'', from a melody of Fauré, pastel, private collection. * ''L'après-midi d'un faune'', pastel, Paris, private collection. * Triptych, ca. 1906, pastel and pencil, Paris : Musée du Petit Palais : ''Hymne à la joie'', 48 x 63 cm, ''

'', 63 x 48 cm, ''L'Appassionata'' 48 x 63 cm. French Art Nouveau interior : Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer realised the architectural setting of the house of Auguste Rateau (1863–1930) between 1910 and 1914. The entire room
Wisteria Dining room
' is now conserved at the

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

References

Sources

Primary sources

* Archives of the Family Zagorowsky at la Documentation du Musée d'Orsay. * Polak, Félix (1896). « Exposition Lévy-Dhurmer », in ''Art et Chiffons'', n°6, 9 février. * Sorrèze, Jacques (1900). « Artistes contemporains L. Lévy-Dhurmer », in ''Revue de l'art Ancien et Moderne'', 10 avril. * Thévenin, Léon (1898). ''La Renaissance Paienne''. Paris : L. Vanier.

Secondary sources

* Barbe, Françoise. Duclos, Clarisse (1982). ''Le portrait chez Lévy-Dhurmer''. Paris : Université Paris-Sorbonne. * Gibson, Michael (1995). "Symbolism".

Köln Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

: Benedikit

Taschen Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt Taschen and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Tasch ...

Verlag. . * Lacambre, Geneviève (1973). « Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer 1865-1953 », in ''La Revue du Louvre''. Paris, n°1, p. 27-34. * Peltre, Christine (1997). ''Les Orientalistes''. Paris : Hazan. * Sage, Deborah (2009–2011), ''Les voyages de Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1865-1953) ''. Paris : Université Paris Ouest-La Défense. * Thornton, Lynne (1983). ''Les Orientalistes, peintres voyageurs : 1828-1908''. Paris : ACR. * ''Autour de Lévy-Dhurmer, Visionnaires et intimistes en 1900'' (1973). Catalogue d’exposition, Galerie du Grand Palais, Paris.

External links

Agence photographique de la RMN

* Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer in l

* Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer in the ttp://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_levydhur.htm Metropolitan Museum de New York {{DEFAULTSORT:Levy-Dhurmer, Lucien 1865 births 1953 deaths Artists from Algiers 19th-century French painters French male painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists French designers Algerian Jews French Symbolist painters Jewish painters Art Nouveau painters Art Nouveau designers 19th-century French male artists