A beauty among Bussiere’s babes
“Joan of Arc” by Gaston Bussiere
Click the image to see it all.
One of the painters who the neocons of the Art Renewal Centre love to love is Gaston Bussiere, and I suspect he caught their eye largely because, as the website says, his “lifelong speciality was the study of the female nude”. And he certainly did his fair share of “exotic dancers”.
But they/us guys can be can be forgiven they’re/our titillations when he comes up with gorgeous works like “Joan of Arc”, from 1908.
Bussiere (1862-1929) was a French illustrator and printmaker, taught first by his father, then Alexandre Cabanel. He pursued symbolism via French legend and Nordic myth, illustrating Balzac’s “The Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans” and Wilde’s “Salomé”.
Here the patron saint-to-be, draped in gilded forest, the wind in the birches behind her, hears the calling from a heavenly recruiting party, described as an angel, St Catherine and St Michael the Archangel, although the first seems to me more like one of the woodland nymphs of which Bussiere was also fond.
The trio offer encouragement, prayer and a sword, respectively.
It’s a compelling look in Jeanne’s eyes, between awe at the magnitude of the duty she’s being summoned to, and resoluteness – steely determination that there can be no hesitation in shucking her country waif’s garb in favour of chainmail and iron.
This is a picture of a legend awakening.
