Jules Flandrin (1871-1947)

The French fin-de-siecle artist Jules Flandrin was a pupil of Gustave Moreau, one of the most prominent figures in the mid-to-late 19th-century art world. His studio was a meeting place for some of the most influential avant-garde artists of the 20th century - Matisse, Albert Marquet and Georges Rouault, artists who shaped our ideas of modern art. Flandrin was a major force amongst these innovators. Widely shown in the French capital in the first years of the new century, on the eve of World War I he was hailed as a torchbearer of 'l'art vivant'. Illustrated exclusively from private collections in Paris and Grenoble, this book provides a unique opportunity to view Flandrin's work, in the context of innovations by which he was both influenced and inspired. His art offers more than just a window on a watershed in the history of the avant-garde. The reader is invited to think about why figures like Flandrin have slipped off the modern art map, and about the larger forces which helped create the canons of early 20th-century avant-garde art.
Edited by Juliet Simpson, the book contains essays (in French) by Georges Flandrin and by Genevieve Lacambre of the Musee d'Orsay and in English by Jon Whiteley of the Ashmolean Museum, exploring Flandrin's relationship with Impressionism and Symbolism as well as with FAuvism and later Modernist experiments.