Suite of landscapes
In his captivating Suite de paysages, Dulac made small variations in each print to convey his deep love of nature. Taking the countryside of northern France as his starting point, he used reflections, shadows and twilight to transform what he saw into ‘landscapes of the soul’.
Dulac printed two lithographs of each scene, all of them in two colours, creating an entirely different effect each time. He also drew a remarque – a personal scribble – below each print, giving them an even more unique character.
Charles Marie Dulac, Plate 1 (Planche 1) from the series Suite de paysages, 1893
Charles Marie Dulac, Plate 6 (Planche 6) from the series Suite de paysages, 1893
Charles Marie Dulac, The Blessed Path (La voie bénie (Jesu, corona Sanctorum omnium. Jesu, sapienta aeterna)) from the series Le cantique des créatures (VII), 1894
Preaching with prints
Dulac converted to Catholicism after being diagnosed with lead poisoning and discovering that he did not have long to live. The purpose of his series Le cantique des créatures (‘The Canticle of Creatures’) was ‘to serve, to praise God’, making it a kind of visual sermon. Like many other Neo-Catholic artists, Dulac believed that modern printmaking lent itself perfectly to this.
He introduced the series with a quotation from St Francis of Assisi. In the prints themselves, abstract and mysterious landscapes evoke his sense of the divine.
Further reading
- Elizabeth Prelinger, ‘Charles Dulac’s Suite de Paysages’, Print Quarterly 12 (1995) no. 1, pp. 41-52
- André Mellerio, La Lithographie originale en couleurs, Paris 1898
- Fred Leeman, Landschappen van de ziel. het symbolistisch landschap in Frankrijk 1880-1910, Amsterdam 2010
- Phillip Dennis Cate, ‘From Redon to Rivière. Albums of the 1890s’,
in: Pat Gilmour (ed.), Lasting Impressions. Lithography as Art, Londen 1988