Les roses d'Ispahan by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
1865-1953 | French

Les roses d’Ispahan

Signed "Lévy Dhurmer" (lower left)
Oil on canvas

French painter Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer was one of the leading artists of the Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements at the turn of the century. This compelling and gorgeous oil on canvas is imbued with a misty, hazy romanticism that characterizes many of his landscapes and portraits, and it is an exceptional example of Lévy-Dhurmer’s ability to transport the viewer into an imaginary journey of the senses. Partly obscured by a rose bush (Isfahan is the name of a Damask rose originally from the Middle East) stands the Persian city of Ispahan. The title is taken from the poem by Charles Leconte de Lisle, which was famously set to music by Gabriel Fauré in 1884. This lush and evocative composition evokes the allure and mystery of this historic city.

Born in French Algeria in 1865, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer studied drawing and sculpture in Paris as a child and began his artistic career as a decorative painter at a porcelain manufactory in Golfe-Juan. Throughout his long career, Lévy-Dhurmer experimented with different artistic styles and mediums, succeeding as a ceramicist, painter, pastelist and furniture designer. Perhaps his most celebrated work, the famed Wisteria Dining Room, which is now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a brilliant example of the artist’s remarkable range of skills in various media.

His trip to Italy in 1895 would change the course of his life and interests. It was there that he discovered an interest in German and Florentine Renaissance — resulting in paintings that fit in nicely alongside those of the English Pre-Raphaelites. That same year, Lévy-Dhurmer officially began his painting career. In 1896, he held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, where he appeared for the first time under the name Lévy-Dhurmer, adding to his surname Lévy part of his mother’s maiden name, Pauline-Amelie Goldhurmer.

His unique blend of Academic detail with Impressionist color and technique garnered the artist considerable attention. He was drawn to the ideals of the Symbolist movement, which offered an intellectual alternative to the purely visual ideals of the Impressionists. After 1900, Lévy-Dhurmer’s art explored the emotional and lyrical possibilities of landscape and atmosphere. Similar landscapes by Lévy-Duhrmer from this period reside in the Denver Art Museum and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Circa 1910

Canvas: 23 3/4" high x 32" wide
Frame:30" high x 38 1/8" wide