Marcel-lenoir, Jules Oury Dit (1872-1931), Portrait, Preparatory Study, 1914

Marcel-Lenoir, Jules Oury dit (1872-1931)
Portrait of Raphaël Fumet (1898-1979) ; preparatory study for "La Famille mystique", 1914
Charcoal and pencil on paper
Signed "Marcel-Lenoir" lower right
Annotated "très clairs" ? top right
Dimensions of the work : 40 x 30 cm
Dimensions of the original frame : 47 x 37 cm

Originally from Montauban, Jules Oury, who later adopted the pseudonym Marcel-Lenoir, moved to Paris in 1889 at the age of seventeen. Strongly encouraged by his father, a goldsmith, to develop his artistic talents, he briefly studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and then at the École des Beaux-Arts. He quickly turned away from goldsmithing to concentrate on painting. The art of the French and Italian primitives that he discovered in the Louvre left a deep impression on him. A great fan of Pierre Puvis de Chavanne, whose encouragement he received, he was naturally attracted by the symbolist nebula and more particularly by the esoteric universe of the Rose+Croix.

A hard worker with an innate talent for color and composition, Marcel-Lenoir produced a fertile, constantly evolving work. He made several stylistic turns, always in a modern and poetic aesthetic, and thus achieved a formidable synthesis of the pictorial innovations of his time. Remaining faithful to massive forms and vivid colors, he was interested in a variety of subjects, both secular and mystical, and participated in the revival of religious painting in the aftermath of the First World War.

A tormented artist imbued with spiritual uncertainties, Marcel-Lenoir was above all profoundly independent. His fierce condemnations of bourgeois art and official institutions were to do his critical fortune a disservice.

The drawing we are proposing is a preparatory study for The Mystical Family, a monumental oil on canvas from 1914 that is kept in the Marcel-Lenoir Museum at the Château de Montricoux. The artist blossomed in monumental decorative art on canvas before tackling fresco, the technique of which he learned on his own in the Tarn-et-Garonne. 

Marcel-Lenoir represents here the Fumet family which consists of the parents and their three children. At the bottom right of the composition is the eldest son, Stanislas Fumet (1896-1983), writer and art critic, a great defender of Marcel-Lenoir and author of Marcel-Lenoir, l'homme et l'œuvre in 1926. Raphaël Fumet (1898-1979), then sixteen years old, is standing to the left of his father in the center. A future organist-composer, Raphaël frequented the artists of Montparnasse and became friends with Chaïm Soutine, Amadeo Modigliani and Juan Gris.

An atmosphere of piety and solemnity emanates from this triangular composition where the characters are as if transcended. The simplicity of the scene, which resembles a family mass, invites meditation. The artist pays particular attention to the preciousness of the clothes, whose heavy drapery symbolizes the earthly weight of the beings.