Susanna and the Elders and some Nabis painters

Susanna and the Elders and the Nabis painters

Waiting for my request to Paris sending me a colour picture of this archived painting of Susanna and the Elders by Roland Marie Gérardin (1907-1935) shown in recent posting I today decided sharing some thematically related great paintings I’ve recently found and I really came to like. 

Susanna by Paul Ranson (1864-1909) and Paul Sérusier (1864-1927)

Just picture-Google Paul Ranson and enter a wonder world of color almost like entering into a dream or hallucination.

  
Ultimately these paintings all leading back to Paul Sérusier’s famous little painting “Talisman”. This little work, below, was to change the course of the world of painting and is said to have been painted on the back of a cigar box.

Colleague, friend and also Nabis convert ("prophet") Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) did his best capturing the bright light in "Mimosa" according to the new theories.

  
After bringing "Talisman" back from Brittany, where Sérusier had met and worked with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), to Paris and the Académie Julian this little marvel would upset the artistic world far beyond the mere 27 x 21 = 57 square cm. it measures. It is now in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.

Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier

Painting without depth (perspective) and simplifying the composition to arrangements and areas of colour it was a sensation and a true revolution. Many of these compositions could well have been designed as prints. 

Paul Ranson (1864-1909)

The group of followers naming themselves the Nabis, decided painting after Gauguins ideas of composition and colour while he later decided to continue his exotic life in the South seas. Among the groupmembers were also Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and  painter sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944). 

Brittany according to Gauguin and Maurice Denis.

Painting like printmakers only Felix Valloton (1865-1925) actually produced many woodblock prints. Revolution started in Pont Aven, Brittany, France.  

His landscape paintings (above) could easily have been designed by a British or Scottish woodblock printmaker like Ian Cheyne (1895-1955) (right) and although all his prints are in black and white, Valloton basically is regarded as one of the pioneers and pivotal figures in Modern Printmaking.

Closing this Susanna posting with three more selected and more or less contemporary paintings: Susanna by influential German painter and Berlin professor Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) who, it was said, could paint a Saint just as well as a Whore and by symbolist painter Franz (von) Stuck (1863-1928). 

The last one (of this choice and selection) is by American Thomas Hart Benton (1884-1978)

All pictures are mouse clickable to embiggen and are borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.