Jean Delville (born Jean Libert; 19 January 1867 – 19 January 1953) was a Belgian symbolist painter, author, poet, polemicist, teacher, and Theosophist. Delville was the leading exponent of the Belgian Idealist movement in art during the 1890s. He 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. He executed a great number of paintings during his active career from 1887 to the end of the second World War (many now lost or destroyed) expressing his Idealist aesthetic. Delville was trained at the Académie 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. He 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. During his time in Italy he created his celebrated masterpiece L'Ecole de Platon (1898), which stands as a visual summary of his Idealist aesthetic which he promoted during the 1890s in his writings, poetry and exhibitions societies, notably the .
Characteristically, Delville's paintings are idea-based, expressing philosophical ideals derived from contemporary hermetic and esoteric traditions. At the start of his career, his esoteric perspective was mostly influenced by the work of Eliphas Levi, Edouard Schuré, Joséphin Péladan and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and later by the Theosophical writings of Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant. The main underlying theme of his paintings, especially during his early career, has to do with initiation and the transfiguration of the inner life of the soul towards a higher spiritual purpose. Specifically they deal with themes symbolising Ideal love, death and transfiguration as well as representations of Initiates ('light bringers'), and the relationship between the material and metaphysical dimensions. His paintings and finished drawings are an expression of a highly sensitive visionary imagination articulated through precisely observed forms drawn from nature. He also had a brilliant gift for colour and composition and excelled in the representation of human anatomy. Many of his major paintings, such as his (1895), (1903) and (1942), represent dozens of figures intertwined in complex arrangements and painted with highly detailed anatomical accuracy. He 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.
Delville's artistic style is strongly influenced by the Classical tradition. He was a lifelong advocate of the value of the Classical training taught in the Academies. He 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. Delville was a respected Academic art teacher. He was employed at the Glasgow School of Art from 1900 to 1906 and as Professor of drawing at the Académie des Beaux-arts in Brussels thereafter until 1937.
He was also a prolific and talented author. He published a very great number of journal articles during his lifetime as well as four volumes of poetry, including his (1897) and (1922). He authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets relating to art and esoteric subjects. The most important of his published books include his esoteric works, (1895) and (1913) as well as his seminal work on Idealist art, (1900). He also created and edited several contemporary journals and newspapers during the 1890s promoting his Idealist aesthetic including and .
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. He also founded the very successful , which provided affordable art materials for artists at the time.
Early years and training Delville was born on 19 January 1867 at 2:00 a.m., rue des Dominicains in Louvain. He was born illegitimate into a working class household. His mother was Barbe Libert (1833–1905), the daughter of a canal worker who earned a living as a as an adult. 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. He bore his mother's name until she married a functionary working in Louvain, Victor Delville (1840–1918). Victor adopted Jean who, until then, was known as Jean Libert. The family moved to Brussels in 1870 and settled in Boulevard Waterloo near Porte de Hal. The Delville family later moved to St Gilles where Delville began his schooling at the in rue du Fort.
Delville took an early interest in drawing, even though his initial career ambitions were to become a Doctor. He was introduced to the artist Stiévenart by his adoptive grandfather, François Delville, while still a young boy. 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.'Quoted in Armand Eggermont, 'Jean Delville. Peintre de la Figure et de l’Idée', 19 janvier 1867-19 janvier 1953, Le Thyrse, IVe série, no. 4 (1 April 1953), p. 152.
At the age of twelve, Delville entered the famous Athénée Royal in Brussels. His interest in art developed around this time and he received his father's permission to enroll in evening drawing classes at the Académie des Beaux-arts in the rue du Midi in 1879. He entered the course for drawing (after the classical head) and in 1882 classes for drawing (after torso and face). Soon after he gave up his schooling at the Athénée to study full-time at the Académie. In 1883, he enrolled in the (class in painting after nature) under the direction of the celebrated teacher Jean-François Portaels (1818–1895). Portaels objected to Delville's youth, but he excelled in the entrance examination and was unconditionally admitted to study painting under Portaels and Joseph Stallaert. Delville was a precocious talent and at age 17 won many of the major prizes at the Academy including 'drawing after nature', 'painting after nature', 'historical composition' (with high distinction), 'drawing after the antique', and ‘figure painting’.Miriam Delville, 'Jean Delville, mon grand-père' in Laoureux, et al. Jean Delville, Maître de l'idéal, pp. 14ff; and Brendan Cole. Jean Delville. Art Between Nature and the Absolute. pp. 19–22.
Artistic career 1887–1900
L'Essor, 1887–1891 Delville first exhibited in a public context at the moderate exhibition society called from 1887 to 1891. His early works were largely depictions of working-class and peasant life executed in a contemporary realist style influenced by Constant Meunier. Delville's early efforts exhibited in 1887 were largely favourably reviewed in the contemporary press, notably L'Art Moderne and the Journal de Bruxelles, even if they were seen to be eclectic and derivative of the works of older established artists. These included works inspired by Baudelaire's poetry including his Frontispiece and (now lost) and his main work of which a detailed drawing still survives.
The following year his works were singled out as among the most outstanding of the 1888 exhibitors at . This was the year in which he exhibited his highly controversial study for his painting depicting a woman in labour. A contemporary review described it in the following: 'On a huge bed with purple sheets ... a dishevelled standing woman displays her nudity as she writhes in spasmodic movements, bending under the pains of childbirth. Her 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 ... abominable vision ....! and poor women!' This subject, rarely depicted in art, was seen to be shocking and contrary to bourgeois taste. It does however signal an aspect of Delville's art to depict ideas that are vivid and provocative.
During the 1880s, Delville's work tended towards social realism. This included images of workers and peasants ( and , 1888); of beggars and destitution (, 1885); of hunger (,1887) and ultimately of death (, 1888). Here he focussed on themes of poverty, despair and hopelessness. In an undated drawing titled Delville depicts a fallen figure curled up on his side in a barren landscape, asleep, or perhaps even dead. However, during the period 1888–1889 his artistic interests started developing in a more non-realist direction and began to move towards Idealism, which dominated his work from then on. This was first indicated in his (now lost) displayed at L'Essor in 1889. The final work (9 × 6 metres) was displayed at the following year (1890) and was inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. It depicts a vast composition of intertwined figures floating through the nether regions of hell. The theme concerns lovers who have succumbed to their erotic passions. One of the main themes of initiation is to control one's lower passions in order to achieve spiritual transcendence. This painting of this work represents this idea in metaphoric form. This is an early major work by Delville sadly destroyed in the incendiary attack on Louvain in 1914. Despite its importance, it was not received with much enthusiasm in the contemporary press.
Another work that display Delville's growing interest in non-realist ideas during the 1880s is his more well-known (Royal Museums of Fine Art, Brussels, 1887). The work is inspired by Wagner's eponymous opera and deals with the relationship between love and death and the idea of transcendence that can be achieved through both. It is an early work that reveals themes closely related to the initiatory tradition which is fully discussed in Brendan Cole's recent book on Delville.
A further important work dealing with non-realist, or Idealist, subject matter was exhibited by Delville at the final exhibition in 1891 titled (the original is lost, but a detailed study recently came up for auction). It depicts a naked female figure dragging a nude male beneath the water. Bright light appears above the male figure while dark sub-aquatic vegetation surrounds the base of the female. The initiatory theme here is self-evident in its depiction of the conflict between spirit (light) and matter (dark vegetation). The male aspires towards the light but is dragged down towards the bottom of the dark mass of water. The work establishes an essential duality between consciousness/unconsciousness, light/dark, as well as spirituality and materialism. In Delville's writings he emphasises this duality and its reconciliation, a theme that pervades much of Symbolist art and writings and was conspicuous amongst Romantic artists as well, especially the writings of Goethe. The theme dominates Delville's art. He wrote that: