JEAN DELVILLE

Jean Delville (January 19, 1867 -- 1953) was a Belgian symbolist painter, writer, and occultist. He founded the Salon d'Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London. During the last decades of the 19th century, many people in the West reacted to the materialism and hypocrisy of the period by developing an interest in esoteric, occult and spiritual subjects. The enthusiasm for these ideas reached its peak during the 1890s, the decade when the Belgian painter and writer Jean Delville was at the height of his powers. Delville was born in the Belgian town of Louvain in 1867. He lived most of his life in Brussels, but also spent some years in Paris, Rome, Glasgow and London. He began his training at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts when he was twelve, continuing there until 1889, and winning a number of top prizes. He began exhibiting professionally at the age of twenty, and later taught at the Academies of Fine Arts in Glasgow and Brussels. In addition to painting, Delville also expressed his ideas in numerous written texts.
"Understood in its metaphysical sense, Beauty is one of the manifestations of the Absolute Being. Emanating from the harmonious rays of the Divine plan, it crosses the intellectual plane to shine once again across the natural plane, where it darkens into matter." (Jean Delville)

Medusa

L'école de Platon

LE FRISSON DU SPHINX

Au pays des Huros, Rhamsès et Sésostris,

mais au temps des Latins et quand la rouge Rome

dressait de bronze et d'or ses empereurs flétris,

c'est l'heure où l'infini planète du cœur de l'homme,

Pareil à l'orbe élu des grands nimbes sacrés

dont la tête des saints futurs doit être ceinte,

la lune en fleur sourit ses rêves éthérés

dans l'encens sidéral frôlant la terre sainte.

Au loin des sables bleus du biblique désert,

couché dans son secret et sa béatitude,

le monstre égyptien, de son œil entr'ouvert,

fixe l'éternité parmi la solitude.

Nul souffle dans la nuit. Mais, parfois, obstiné,

le hurlement lointain d'un vieux fauve qui rôde

et renifle à longs traits, vers l'horizon tourné,

les tragiques relents du grand crime d'Hérode.

(Jean Delville 1897)

Portrait of Madame Stuart Merrill, Mysteriosa

                                                       

Orpheus

                                                     

The Idol of Perversity (1891 - Jean Delville)