Louis Emile Adan - In Prayer

Louis Emile ADAN (Paris, 1839 – Paris, 1937)
In prayer
Drawing on paper
38.3x27 cm (sheet) / 50x40 cm framed
Signed lower right “L. Emile Adan”
This drawing was restored by a paper conservator authorised by French museums

Son of a painter, Louis Emile Adan studied at the Paris School of Fine Arts in the workshops of François-Edouard Picot and Alexandre Cabanel. Admitted to the Salon from 1863, the year of the first Salon des Refusés, he exhibited there every year until his death in 1937 and led a successful official career. A medalist at the Salons of 1875 and 1882, he won the gold medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 before being decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1892.
A painter, he was also a watercolorist and illustrator. This drawing is part of a set of devotional scenes produced throughout his career and can be compared in particular to the painting he exhibited at the Salon of the Societe des artistes français in 1895. Entitled On Pilgrimage, it represents a woman kneeling with her back, in prayer, in front of a chapel decorated with a sculpted group depicting a lament of Christ, her baby in her arms and her parents to her left[1]. In the painting as in our drawing, the choice of a representation from behind places the spectator as an observer outside the scene, with a form of distancing respectful of the contemplation of the young woman, anonymized, of whom only the clothes (headdress, apron, clogs) betray a low social origin and which can thus appear as an allegory of faith.

[1] This painting is reproduced on the Beaux-arts de Paris website: https://catzarts.beauxartsparis.fr/fr/notice/ph-20048-en-pelerinage-11fc543e-0914-4b76-b264-a038b41a916b