Seraphine Louis (de Senklis)

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History Lesson: Seraphine de Senlis

Seraphine Louis

A few weeks ago I saw a movie called Seraphine. The film was about the eccentric French painter Seraphine Louis (1864–1942). Very little is actually known about her life, however one fact is known that before she had turned 8, both of her parents had died leaving her to become a house keeper and servant, an occupation she had for most of her life.

As an adult, Seraphine rented a small secluded room in the town of Senlis, France where she lived and painted by candle light at night ‘using colors that she made herself from unusual and exotic ingredients she never revealed that have stood the test of time for durable vividness.

Seraphine Louis

In 1912 Seraphine’s paintings were discovered by the German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. Uhde came to Senlis for a rest from his work as an art critic. He had rented a large apartment and hired Seraphine as his housekeeper. His neighbors upon finding out that they were living next to the prominent art dealer, critic, writer and collector Wilhelm Uhde invited him to a dinner party to discuss art and culture. Uhde accepted the invitation and attended. During dinner Uhde saw a painting of some Apples, striking and unusual in color and form, he Marveled at the beauty, strangeness and artistry of the piece. Uhde inquired about the artist learning that it was in fact a painting done by his housekeeper Seraphine.

Uhde smitten with this painting buys it outright from his neighbor and rushes home. Upon his discovery he confronts Seraphine and slowly over a brief two years the two begin a friendship. Uhde begun to collect a number Seraphine’s work paying her cash in hopes it would support her and encourage her to paint more.

In 1914 the war broke out between France and Germany, Uhde feared for his life and fled France entirely in the middle of the night with his sister, taking only what he could carry which included a painting by Henri Rousseau. Other paintings he had collected were left behind. As the town of Senlis was pillaged, Uhde’s collection was confiscated and sold at auction or destroyed. Among these were the acquired paintings of Seraphine Louis which have been lost forever.

It was not until years later in 1927 when Uhde rediscovered Seraphine’s paintings. Living in Chantilly, France at the time, he attended an exhibition of painted works done by amateur artists from Senlis. He saw a painting that he recognized to be Seraphine’s and knew he had to see if his great painter had survived the war. He traveled back to Senlis to find her still living in quiet isolation in her tiny room filled with more paintings and an alter of candles illuminating a picture of the Virgin Mary. The desolation of WWI had left Seraphine even more poverty stricken and hungry than ever before. Uhde, speechless and overwhelmed with joy to have reunited with her became her benefactor, supplying her with deliveries of large canvases, paints and supplies and a stipend. Seraphine’s paintings became larger and larger and more saturated with rich colors of fantastical floral arrangements. The larger her work became the more it began to sell. Life for Seraphine Louis, for only a short while was enjoyable. Her friendship with Uhde had catapulted her into a period of financial success she had never known before. She now could paint all day, all night at any hour in a studio separate from her living quarters. Such luxury she had never known before and was ill equipped to handle. This new financial equanimity overwhelmed her, she squandered much of her new wealth on frivolities.

Seraphine Louis

The onset of the Great Depression devastated the world. In 1930 art buyers and collectors could no longer afford to buy the work that they loved and supported. Uhde suffering the effects as well, could no longer afford to support Seraphine as an artist or her personal expenditures. Shortly thereafter Seraphine’s mental state became erratic and unstable she grew depressed, despondent and began to slip into lunacy. In 1932 she was admitted into a hospital for the insane for chronic psychosis where she died in 1942 alone.

While hospitalized and after her death Uhde continued to show her paintings. At the Modern Primitives Exhibition in Paris in 1932, as well as Popular Masters of Reality in Paris in 1937, in addition to other shows including a solo show in Paris and in New York at The Museum of Modern Art. Her paintings are now part of the collections of the Musée d’art de Senlis, Musee Malliol in Paris, the Musée d’art naïf in Nice, and the Musée d’Art moderne Lille Métropole in Villeneuve d’Ascq.

SOURCE: Dee Clements on Sunday, April 25th, 2010, on www.papercrane.com

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER OF THE MOVIE, SERAPHINE, BASED ON THE ARTIST'S LIFE IN SENLIS, FRANCE

SÉRAPHINE

Séraphine Louis (akaSéraphine de Senlis ) - Obscure Early 1900's French Artist

(1864-1942). Séraphine Louis, sometimes called Séraphine de Senlis, French painter born at Assy in the Oise. She spent her childhood watching over animals, then worked in Senlis as a housekeeper. Almost nothing is known of her life or of how she began to paint. Later, when she was almost famous, she always guarded the secret of her prodigious enamelled technique. It was Wilhelm Uhde who discovered her in 1912. He had rented a small apartment in Senlis for a rest and had hired an old woman to do the housework for him. In a middle-class household nearby he discovered a still life of apples lying on a table, and was deeply impressed. Enquiring about the artist, he learned that it was the servant Séaphine. The first works of hers that he acquired at this time were confiscated and sold at the beginning of the war, and they have disappeared. It was not until many years later that having established himself in Chantilly, he again saw pictures by Séraphine at an exhibition of regional artists in the town hall of Senlis. Struck by the scope of these new works, he sought out the old woman, who lived shut up in a poor room where a small lamp burned day and night before an image of the Virgin. Séraphine, 'small and withered, with a fanatical look and lived face framed by discoloured locks', devoted herself entirely to painting. With the help of Uhde, who supplied her at last with the vast canvases her overflowing imagination required, she achieved a work of unique spiritual significance within a few years. She painted nothing but flowers, leaves and fruit, but hers bear little relation to their natural counterparts. Descriptive or decorative purposes were completely foreign to her art of mystical effusion, which can be compared only to the most lustrous Persian ceramics. The great stained-glass flames in the churches of Senlis, the only possible sources of inspiration of the pious Séraphine, perhaps gave her the idea for the ascending rhythms that activate her large canvases. The details of these works give access to a strange inner world: leaves, whose centre is a fruit or upon which eyes open and lips appear, fringed with lashes, recall peacock's plumage and the wings of the rarest birds. The precision and sureness of these imaginary forms should be emphasized, as well as the magic richness of the colours employed and the balance and harmony of the canvases, which are related to no natural order. Despite evidences of certain obsessions -Séraphine died in a lunatic asylum -- her works are never repetitions; they are perhaps the most direct attempt at expression of a soul.

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