1. Jean Delville, born Jean Libert, was a Belgian symbolist painter, author, poet, polemicist, teacher, and Theosophist.
119 Facts About Jean Delville
1. 2.
Jean Delville held, throughout his life, the belief that art should be the expression of a higher spiritual truth and that it should be based on the principle of Ideal, or spiritual Beauty.
3.
Jean Delville executed a great number of paintings during his active career from 1887 to the end of the second World War expressing his Idealist aesthetic.
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Jean Delville was trained at the Academie des Beaux-arts in Brussels and proved to be a highly precocious student, winning most of the prestigious competition prizes at the Academy while still a young student.
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Jean Delville later won the Belgian Prix de Rome which allowed him to travel to Rome and Florence and study at first hand the works of the artists of the Renaissance.
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Characteristically, Jean Delville's paintings are idea-based, expressing philosophical ideals derived from contemporary hermetic and esoteric traditions.
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Jean Delville had a brilliant gift for colour and composition and excelled in the representation of human anatomy.
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Jean Delville was an astonishingly skilled draughtsman and painter capable of producing highly expressive works on a grand scale, many of which can be seen in public buildings in Brussels, including the Palais de Justice.
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Jean Delville was a lifelong advocate of the value of the Classical training taught in the Academies.
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Jean Delville believed that the discipline acquired as a result of this training was not an end in itself, but rather a valuable means of acquiring a solid drawing and painting technique to allow artists freely to develop their personal artistic style, without inhibiting their individual creative personality.
11.
Jean Delville was employed at the Glasgow School of Art from 1900 to 1906 and as Professor of drawing at the Academie des Beaux-arts in Brussels thereafter until 1937.
12.
Jean Delville published a very great number of journal articles during his lifetime as well as four volumes of poetry, including his and.
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Jean Delville authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets relating to art and esoteric subjects.
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Jean Delville created and edited several contemporary journals and newspapers during the 1890s promoting his Idealist aesthetic including and.
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Jean Delville was an energetic artistic entrepreneur, creating several influential artistic exhibition societies, including and the in the 1890s and later, the in the 1920s which was responsible for the decoration of public buildings including the mosaics in the hemicycle of the Cinquantenaire in Brussels.
16.
Jean Delville founded the very successful, which provided affordable art materials for artists at the time.
17.
Jean Delville was born illegitimate into a working class household.
18.
Jean Delville's mother was Barbe Libert, the daughter of a canal worker who earned a living as a as an adult.
19.
Jean Delville never knew his father Joachim Thibault who was a lecturer in Latin and Greek at a local college and who came from a bourgeoisie family.
20.
Jean Delville bore his mother's name until she married a functionary working in Louvain, Victor Delville.
21.
Jean Delville took an early interest in drawing, even though his initial career ambitions were to become a Doctor.
22.
Jean Delville was introduced to the artist Stievenart by his adoptive grandfather, Francois Delville, while still a young boy.
23.
Jean Delville recalls that this was 'the first artist I had ever seen, and for me, as a child, still unaware of my vocation, this was an enchanting experience.
24.
At the age of twelve, Jean Delville entered the famous Athenee Royal in Brussels.
25.
Jean Delville entered the course for drawing and in 1882 classes for drawing.
26.
Jean Delville first exhibited in a public context at the moderate exhibition society called from 1887 to 1891.
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Jean Delville's face is contorted, her gnashing teeth alternate with the curse, her clenched hands lift the bed cover over her belly in an unconscious reflex of modesty.
28.
Jean Delville's growing interest in Idealist art led him to instigate a succession from to start a new exhibition society called.
29.
One of the principal members of the group, in view of his talent and astonishing fecundity, is Jean Delville, who is a writer and a poet; with a powerful imagination that is funereal and tormented.
30.
Jean Delville's, was Jean Delville's main work of that show.
31.
Jean Delville exhibited at Josephin Peladan's for the first four years of their existence, which coincided with his own salons.
32.
Jean Delville probably met Peladan in Paris when he accompanied one of the touring exhibitions of L'Essor, around 1888.
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Jean Delville shared Peladan's concept of creating a forum that showcased art of an exclusively Idealist persuasion.
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Jean Delville sought to bring Idealist art into the public eye in Belgium through the salons, but more specifically in the which he founded in 1895 and opened to the public in 1896.
35.
In 1892 Jean Delville exhibited his as well as his.
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In 1895 Jean Delville exhibited four works including his portrait of Peladan: and.
37.
Jean Delville lived as an indigent artist in St Gilles in Brussels during the course of his early career.
38.
Jean Delville won the 1895 competition, but his entry created a controversy amongst his peers given the 'Establishment' nature of the Prix that ran counter to the ideals of the avant-garde at the time.
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Jean Delville was by then a fairly established figure in avant-garde circles and his association with the Prix de Rome appeared to be a betrayal of their cause.
40.
The Prix de Rome meant that Jean Delville could spend a significant amount of time in Italy studying the Classical art of the Renaissance that he admired so much.
41.
Jean Delville was expected to send regular reports back to the Antwerp Academy relating to his work there.
42.
Jean Delville produced several remarkable paintings during his time in Rome that reflect a dramatic evolution in his art towards a more refined expression of this Idealist aesthetic.
43.
In 1895, Jean Delville published his first book on esoteric philosophy,.
44.
Jean Delville's were exclusively devoted to exhibiting artwork of an Idealist nature.
45.
Jean Delville signalled his programme in a series of polemical articles during the course of the months preceding the opening of the first Salon, which created some controversy amongst his contemporaries.
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Jean Delville's ideas were bold and confrontational, but it was characteristic of him to stick to the courage of his convictions and to carry his projects through with relentless energy and determination.
47.
Jean Delville's salons were significant for their inclusion of women artists, something almost unheard of in other contemporary avant-garde exhibition societies.
48.
Jean Delville's 'treasures' are the sleeping figures surrounded with jewels and gold coins, objects representing materialism and avarice.
49.
Jean Delville's contributions were small and included his, and, which are now, apart from, in private collections.
50.
At the time Jean Delville was in Italy on his prescribed sojourn there after winning the coveted Prix de Rome.
51.
In 1895 Jean Delville published his, a text in which he outlined his views on occultism and esoteric philosophy.
52.
Brendan Cole discusses this text in detail his book on Jean Delville, pointing out that, though the Dialogue reflects the ideas of a number of occultists, it reveals a new interest in Theosophy.
53.
Jean Delville was probably introduced to Theosophy directly through his friendship with Edouard Schure, the author of the widely influential book.
54.
Jean Delville came into close alliance with Annie Besant who inherited the leadership of the Theosophical movement.
55.
Jean Delville reviewed her talks in an article published in that year.
56.
Jean Delville founded, a journal devoted to Theosophical ideas in 1899, and published articles from leading Theosophists of the day, including Besant.
57.
Jean Delville became the first General Secretary of the Belgian branch of the Theosophical Society in 1911.
58.
Jean Delville's art flourished after 1900 and he produced some of his greatest works during this period up to the First World War.
59.
Jean Delville worked with undiminished strength and imagination and his paintings revealed a visionary sense of the transcendental inspired by his involvement in the Theosophical movement, seen typically in works such as his monumental and.
60.
Jean Delville's most striking achievement is his series of five vast canvases that decorated the Cour d'Assises in the Palais de Justice on the theme of 'Justice through the Ages'.
61.
Jean Delville hoped to secure a teaching place at the Academy in Brussels, but was offered instead a teaching position at the flourishing Glasgow School of Art in 1900.
62.
When Jean Delville returned to Brussels in 1907, many of his British students followed him to further their training under his tutelage in his private studio in rue Morris.
63.
At that time, Jean Delville fulfilled his ambition to teach at the Brussels Academy and was appointed Professor of Life Studies, a post he held until his retirement in 1937.
64.
Jean Delville moved there with his entire family, including his wife and four younger children and settled in Golders Green in London.
65.
Jean Delville played an active role in London through his writings, art and public addresses in support of the Belgians in exile and the conflict against the Germans.
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Jean Delville contributed to the Belgian expatriate newspaper in London, L'Independence Belge and wrote several articles and poems virulently condemning German aggression.
67.
Maeterlinck contributes a eulogy of King Albert, and there are poems by Emile Verhaeren, Marcel Wyseur, and Jean Delville, who writes an introduction.
68.
At that time Jean Delville was an active Freemason and was involved in La Loge Albert 1er that reunited Belgian Freemasons in exile living in Britain.
69.
From an early point in his career Jean Delville was interested in producing art that would be displayed in public spaces for the edification of all.
70.
Jean Delville's ideals were strongly aligned to the idea of a social purpose for art, about which he wrote extensively during his career.
71.
In 1924 Jean Delville expressed his idea for the cycle as a 'vision of a frieze in mosaic unfurling its rhythm of lines and its harmony of colours between the columns of the hemicycle'.
72.
Jean Delville maintained his post as at the Academy of Fine Art in Brussels until 1937 and continued to paint until crippling arthritis in his right hand forced him to give up the brush in 1947.
73.
Jean Delville was still able to sustain a power of expression and a highly articulate finish to his works in his later years that was there from the very start.
74.
Jean Delville remained a committed and passionate Theosophist until his death in 1953 and he maintained in one of his biographies that this always formed the foundation to this moral and artistic perspective throughout his later life.
75.
Jean Delville wrote prolifically throughout his life outlining his Idealist aesthetic.
76.
Jean Delville's Idealist theory is a syncretic formulation of traditional Idealist thinking and contemporary esoteric philosophy.
77.
In summary, Jean Delville believed that art is the expression of the Ideal in material form and is founded on the principle of Ideal Beauty, in other words Beauty that is the manifestation of the Ideal, or spiritual realm, in physical objects.
78.
For Jean Delville, the Idea is an expression of the Ideal realm, and it is a living force within human experience that dwells within the transpersonal realm of human experience.
79.
In French Jean Delville referred to these terms as:, and.
80.
Jean Delville goes further to map his threefold conception of beauty onto his esoteric conception of the threefold nature of reality, consisting of the natural, human and divine realms, as well as the threefold nature of man as body, soul and mind.
81.
Jean Delville believed that the purest expression of Idealist art was to be found in the Classical tradition of ancient Greek art and the High Renaissance.
82.
Jean Delville developed a distinct style in his painting, which is unmistakable.
83.
Jean Delville's finished drawing and paintings are highly articulate and precise in the way he renders forms.
84.
Jean Delville had a great imagination for colour and its use for expressive purposes.
85.
Jean Delville's colours are often vivid, almost visionary, most clearly seen in his which is bathed in an atmosphere of luminous golds and yellows.
86.
Jean Delville's is a paradigm of serenity in his use of muted, cool colours and pastel shades to emphasise the intellectual idyll of Plato's Akademos.
87.
Almost all of Jean Delville's paintings focus on the human form as the bearer of the drama of his works.
88.
Jean Delville was a master of the articulation of human anatomy which he used to express vividly his Idealist technique and ideas.
89.
Jean Delville left the interpretations to the viewer, and as a result his best pictures have an air of mystery and intrigue.
90.
Jean Delville's radiating red-orange hair combines with the fluid light of her aura.
91.
Olivier adds that "the young Mrs Merrill-Rion" was a Belgian, and that Jean Delville was struck by her strange beauty and depicted her with a mediumistic character.
92.
Jean Delville's face is of the exquisite beauty commonly seen in Renaissance portraiture, notably in the work of Leonardo, whom Delville admired.
93.
Jean Delville's proportions are odd, by human standards, and they were criticised by his contemporaries, but Delville understood that to humanise the angel would be to contradict her symbolic function in this work.
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Jean Delville remains a being who is physically of her own, transcendental, realm.
95.
Jean Delville exhibited his at the Salon de Gand in September 1895 while he was working on his entry for the Belgian Prix de Rome.
96.
Jean Delville was an Idealist, in other words, he believed in the reality of a transcendental or spiritual dimension as the basis of reality.
97.
Jean Delville expressed these ideas in an article published in the contemporary journal in 1893:.
98.
Jean Delville painted this work while he was in Italy on his artistic sojourn there after winning the coveted Belgian Prix de Rome.
99.
Jean Delville was then, at last, able to study the classical works of the Renaissance and the ancient world that profoundly influenced his artistic ideas.
100.
The scale of the painting is impressive, measuring 2.60 metres high by 6.05 metres long, and Jean Delville certainly had in mind large-scale academic history paintings which were the preserve of erudite artistic subjects painted in the Classical tradition, which he sought to renew.
101.
The style of the painting is inspired by the Italian frescoes by Raphael and Michelangelo that Jean Delville would have seen while in Rome, characterised by bold articuation of forms with a matte finish.
102.
Jean Delville was immersed in studying the esoteric tradition and the hidden philosophies that were popular at the time.
103.
Jean Delville wrote often that the goal of art should aspire towards expressing Absolute, or Spiritual Beauty in physical form.
104.
Jean Delville saw Classical art as the purest expression of this goal and he sought a revival of this idea in art, reworking it in a way that was appropriate for his contemporary cultural era.
105.
The men in this painting are conceived in an idealised androgynous form: a concept that Jean Delville, following Peladan, developed to express the ideal of a non-erotic perfection of the human state that synthesises the male and female principle in an idea of wholeness and perfection, which emulates the original state of human perfection that precedes our split, dual experience of reality in our earthly incarnation.
106.
Jean Delville depicts the union of souls, male and female, in a cosmic setting.
107.
Jean Delville often wrote of the nature of duality and the forces of opposites, as well as the need to bring these into harmony, in other words achieving Equilibrium.
108.
Jean Delville painted this work in tempera, where pigments are mixed with egg white to create a luminous finish and a highly durable work of art.
109.
Jean Delville was highly influenced by the artists of the Italian Renaissance who often used tempera in their works, and which, to this day, retain their purity of colour and luminosity to a high degree.
110.
Jean Delville supplemented this unreliable income by teaching art, but his busy professional life did not prevent him from applying his strongly held beliefs to his personal life.
111.
Jean Delville is still not nearly as well known as some of his contemporaries of the Symbolist era.
112.
Jean Delville shunned the commercialisation of art and the way it was manufactured as an elite commodity.
113.
Jean Delville was mainly committed to using art as a force to transform society and to improve the lives of those around him.
114.
Jean Delville wrote: 'there will be nothing to prevent art increasingly to become an educative force in society, conscious of its mission.
115.
Jean Delville believed, rather, that a respiritulaisation of society would be a redeeming path to rescue it from the morbidity of materialism.
116.
Jean Delville remained desperately poor during the early part of his career and his condition was only occasionally relieved by the stipend associated with the Prix de Rome that he won as well as his employment at the Glasgow School of Art, and later the Ecole des beaux-arts.
117.
Jean Delville never sold to dealers and only very seldom took on private commissions for portraits.
118.
Jean Delville came from a working-class background which was a huge disadvantage in the contemporary bourgeois-dominated culture in Belgium.
119.
Finally, Jean Delville was fiercely independent in his approach to promoting his ideas and artistic ideals, seldom bending to the will of what was popular or acceptable in conservative bourgeois circles that controlled and dominated the art market during his formative years.