ALBERT LORIEUX (born 1862)    Biography
SYMBOLISTE (founded 1886)   

Solitude (France, c.1898)

Not For Sale

Oil on canvas
Signed A Lorieux,inscribed on the stretcher Solitude and Salon 1898

Dimensions:

80.50cm wide   100.00cm high (31.69 inches wide  39.37 inches high)

Exhibition History
Paris, Salon des Artistes Français, 1898
The Lightbox, Woking, Visionary Victorians: British & European Painting 1850 – 1900, 9th May - 5th July 2009

Description / Expertise
In a climate of anxiety, which followed the political unrest of 1870, the ‘age of decadence’ created a deeper impression in France than elsewhere. The young Belgian poet Verhaeren, in a letter to Odilon Redon, wrote: I struggle against myself because I am barred form all other forms of heroism. I love all those things, which are absurd, useless, impossible, mad, excessive, intense, because I feel them like needles inside me.(1)

Like Redon, Albert Lorieux has painted Solitude with the intense spirituality of the symbolist era. For artists and writers, Symbolism became the language of dreams. In Solitude there is a contemplative mysticism within the timeless and calm serenity where only the softly falling leaves interrupt the meditative stillness of the place.

Born in Paris, Lorieux was a pupil of Gaston la Touche. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he won a medal in 1909.


1. Quoted in Philippe Jullian, French Symbolist Painters, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1972, page 8