25 - Jean Francis AUBURTIN (Paris 1866 – Dieppe 1930)

Jean Francis AUBURTIN (Paris 1866 – Dieppe 1930) Nymph at the Basin Pastel and gouache 51 x 73.5 cm (image size) Monogrammed lower left Exhibition: Aix-les-Bains Museum, number 52 Born amid the turmoil of a century drawing to a close, Jean-Francis Auburtin combined various influences with an independent spirit. Drawn to Impressionism and the Pont-Aven School, he also fulfilled official academic commissions, while embracing Orientalism and Symbolism, from which he adopted a vocabulary of mermaids, fauns, cyclopes, and centaurs. Through his nymphs and naiads, Auburtin “tackles the eternal struggle between earth and water, spirit and matter, nature and renewal...”. As Béatrice de Andia writes, “The delicate, bucolic painting presented by Jean-Francis Auburtin […] is profound and serene. His landscapes, rendered in subtle tones, evoke the golden age of a lost paradise. Discreet and mysterious, amid the silence of hazy contours, he suggests an elusive mysticism...". While his large-scale mural decorations, inspired by the example of Puvis de Chavannes, constitute the official aspect of his work, Auburtin simultaneously pursues a more intimate career as a landscape painter. Sketchbook in hand, he seeks out motifs and builds a vast formal repertoire. In the South, he celebrates colors and contrasts; in Normandy, he favors subtle gradations; in Brittany and the Pyrenees, he draws on the lessons of ukiyo-e. Preferring to use gouache in layered applications, textured gray papers, formats similar to kakemono, asymmetrical compositions, bird’s-eye views of Étretat, or very high horizons, Auburtin reveals his taste for Japonism, particularly between 1894 and 1914, confirmed by his adoption of a monogram—a sign, according to Christian Briend, of a desire to identify with a Japanese artist. The landscape also serves as the setting for a modern Arcadia. In these scenes “where the terrestrial and marine worlds confront one another, the narrative element remains mostly allusive, allowing these suspended moments to resonate fully. The call and the listening—which freeze the figures in an attentive, timeless stillness—constitute the main themes of most of his paintings […].” Nourished by his friendship with Guillaume Mallet, a Wagnerian and theosophist, Auburtin’s imagination imbues the figures with an archaic dimension: nymphs and mermaids “do not, according to Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, take part in an ancient spectacle”; they seem, “in Auburtin’s vision […] by virtue of their temporal precedence,” to be “the very soul of a nature prior to humanity, intact and pure.” This vision culminates in the Pyrenees series, particularly around the Pic de Béhorléguy, where variations in light and the changing seasons exalt the permanence of a sovereign nature. Thus, Jean-Francis Auburtin chose to depict figures directly inspired by mythology. Whether nymphs or centaurs, the artist made them the principal subjects of his paintings, as in “Nymph at the Basin.” The aquatic world in particular, with its countless mermaids and nymphs, provided fertile ground for the imagination and a sense of the uncanny in late 19th-century art. These figures are depicted in settings that evoke a certain reality—we can sometimes recognize the coasts of Brittany or Normandy, or even further south in the Pyrenees or Porto, for example. Nevertheless, the treatment reveals a thoroughly innovative sensibility thanks to the surreal color palettes tinged with blue, green, and pink, suggesting a world and characters that are almost supernatural or immortal. For example, in “Nymph at the Basin” and “Nude by the Lake,” Auburtin creates two dreamlike atmospheres bathed in shades of blue on the one hand, and green hues on the other. The figures seem suspended in majestic landscapes of lakes and mountains, with the murmur of rivers flowing in the foreground. In “Nude by the Lake,” Auburtin chooses to depict this female figure in the foreground, while the curves of her body blend with the ground and the foliage. His heroines thus embody the elusive rustling of nature, while eluding any known iconography. By linking the immensity of the landscape to a figure who personifies the “voice” of the river, he affirms, with great poetic originality, his affiliation with the Symbolist movement. Quotes from “Jean-Francis Auburtin, Un âge d’or,” Musée de Lodève, Snoeck Gent, 2021, pages 10–12