Lucien Jonas
Lucien Hector Jonas (born April 8, 1880 in Anzin , † September 20, 1947 in Paris ) was a French painter , draftsman and lithographer . He was considered one of the most productive French artists in the first half of the 20th century.
life and work
Jonas was born into a family of industrialists. His father Hubert Émile (1849–1902) came from Eugies in Belgium and owned a distillery for essences. His mother Anna Emilia (née Carpentier) discovered her son's artistic talents early on and encouraged them. He studied first in Valenciennes with the painter Joseph Layraud , then in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts with Albert Maignan , Léon Bonnat and Henri Harpignies . After the death of his father in 1902 he returned to Anzien for a while and supported his mother in the management of the distillery, but there he also found motifs for numerous, in some cases award-winning, paintings. He exhibited in the salon and in 1905 won second prize for the painting Consolations (Museum of Valenciennes) and thus the Prix de Rome . In 1907 he received a travel grant from the French state which enabled him to visit all the major European museums. A year later he married Suzanne Louise Bedorez; the marriage had three children. In 1912 he painted Le nid (Das Nest) Suzanne with her two children, which was presented in the Bernheim Gallery and which resulted in numerous other portrait commissions. In 1914, Jonas bought a spacious house (also called Villa de la Faisanderie ) in 1 rue Cothenet in the 16th arrondissement in order to satisfy the growing space requirements of Atelier and the now larger family. Jonas was mobilized in December 1914 . In 1916 he was appointed official war painter. Around 1917 he painted numerous portraits of Allied military commanders, including the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front Douglas Haig , Generals Marie-Eugène Debeney and Victor d'Urbal and Admiral Lucien Lacaze (all Musée de l'Armée , Paris). His drawing General Pershing is in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art .
He achieved wide fame through his depictions of the First World War . His oeuvre comprised more than four thousand drawings of life at the front, landscapes destroyed by the enemy and of French soldiers and officers of the war. They have appeared in numerous newspapers, including the Paris weekly Illustration . At the same time he designed numerous anti-German propaganda posters in which he appealed to national sentiments. In his paintings he combined Christian iconography with nationalist symbolism . An example is his painting La Sauveur (1920), which is part of a war memorial in the Saint-Cordon basilica in Valenciennes and depicts a French soldier as crucified Jesus. He found another extensive topic in the portrayal of his homeland around Valenciennes, which was shaped by mining: the miners and the landscape shaped by coal mining. His design for the 10 franc banknote, which appeared in occupied France in 1941, depicts a Hauer .
After the First World War, the family home on Rue Cothenet became a meeting place for Parisian painters, actors and sculptors, who also met important military leaders such as Maxime Weygand and Marie Émile Fayolle here . In 1922, Jonas designed a large-scale, limited suite for Molière's 300th birthday, which featured 86 lithographs of actors who had played plays at the Comédie Française in Molière, including Madeleine Renaud and Marie Bell . Further orders for large paintings followed. The family spent 1926 in the mild climate of Menton , where Jonas had bought a house next to Henri Harpignies ' villa in the early 1920s. Suzanne died in 1928. In 1929 Jonas was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) for his services . For the salon he preferred to paint portraits , including those of André François-Poncet (1930) and Maurice Donnay (1931). He decorated numerous public buildings and churches in northern France with wall paintings.
In 1930 he married Jeanne Tard, with whom he went on numerous study trips. From 1932 he traveled to Italy and also stayed in Savoy and Nice. In 1933 stays in Algiers followed . For the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1935 he designed the pavilion of the Belgian mining companies. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 he was involved in the painting of three pavilions. From 1940 he worked for the Banque de France on the design of new banknotes. Since his way to Menton was cut off during the Vichy regime , he commuted between Paris and La Flèche in northern France . In 1942 he created a large tapestry for the Manufacture des Gobelins entitled Le travail pour la France (Works for France), which was exhibited in the Musée de l'Orangerie in 1943 . He designed banknotes for France, Indochina, Syria, Lebanon and Djibouti.
Jonas died in Paris and, as requested, was buried in La Flèche in a soldiers' memorial from the First World War.
literature
- Jonas, Lucien Hector . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 19 : Ingouville – Kauffungen . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1926, p. 112 .
- Jonas, Lucien Hector . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 561 .
- Jacques Jonas: Lucien Jonas. Creator of billets de banque. La Rochelle 2003.
- Christophe Leribault: Lucien Jonas, 1880–1947. Collections du Musée Carnavalet. Éditions des Musées de la Ville de Paris, Paris 2003.
- Emmanuelle Delapierre (Ed.): L'empreinte d'une ville. Les grands décors valenciennois de Lucien Jonas. Clermont-Ferrand 2006.
- Jonas, Lucien Hector (Lucien) . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 78, de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-023183-0 , p. 243.
Web links
- Lucien Jonas , on kunst-antiek-gent.be
- Les sociétaires de la Comédie Française interprètes de Molière by Lucien Jonas
- Biography Lucien Jonas (PDF, French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ A Grand Prix was not awarded in 1905.
- ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Collection Online - General Pershing, 1917 .
- ^ Almut Lindner-Wirsching: French writers and their nation in the First World War. Walter de Gruyter, 2004, ISBN 3-11-093969-X , p. 243.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jonas, Lucien |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jonas, Lucien Hector (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French painter, draftsman and lithographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 8, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Anzin |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 20, 1947 |
| Place of death | Paris |