L'oubli des Passions (The Forgetting of Passions)

Philippe Jullian briefly surmises Jean Dellville’s career as “the master of the philosophical side of Symbolism, he was a disciple of Péladan and lived in Paris during the 1890s; then he became a teacher at Glasgow and Brussels”. (P. Julien, The Symbolists, Oxford, 1973, p. 238).

Following the recognition and appreciation of Delville’s time teaching in Glasgow, he was appointed as the Premier professeur at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Aged 40, he receives a commission for the five large panels for the Courtyard room of the Brussels Courthouse, a worthy commission which would take six years to complete. Miriam Delville acknowledges the stability this brings to Delville’s life, “Jean then experiences a great feeling of happiness. This commission also improves his financial stability: he decides to expand his house by adding a tower, at the top of which he created a meditation chamber with a starry ceiling. In the garden of the Italian poplars then frolic six children: the youngest, Annie, was born in 1909. Furthermore, his painting School of Plato was acquired by the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. Reassured, he can then paint L’Oubli des Passions’ (M. Delville, ‘Jean Delville, mon grand-père’ in Jean Delville, Maître de l’idéal, Paris, 2014, p. 26.)

This biographical insight gives context to L’Oubli des Passions. Delville’s happiness is painted into the relaxed semi-reclining forms of the two figures. Whilst there is a subdued white light on the horizon, the figure’s semi-naked forms are bathed in moonlight. The ocean is calm, which accentuates the ripples in the female figure’s robes. Her earthly blue garments are both falling away, but also reverentially covering her head like a renaissance Madonna. The whole scene is perhaps a reflection of what Delville envisaged in the creation of the meditation chamber, at the top of his tower, to be.

Clearly content with the motif of star gazing figures, Delville returns to this theme later in his career, notably with L’Ecole du silence (oil on canvas, 1929, Private Collection) where three female figures – echoing the three graces - sit with their heads stretched upwards contemplating the night sky. The sit on a man-made stone plinth in a wooded garden landscape rather than a mountainous natural form surrounded by the empty sea and star filled sky.

The later treatment of the theme serves to emphasise that in L’Oubli des Passions the artist’s relaxed happiness is clearly reflected. It is meditative work and a contemplative approach to the earthly meeting with the ethereal.