Le Calvaire (Calvary)

Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931) was a leading French painter, printmaker and illustrator of the 19th and 20th centuries. He exhibited with the Impressionists at the invitation of his mentor and close friend, Edgar Degas, in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th exhibitions (1879-1886). His ballet scenes show his awareness of Degas, while his courtroom scenes, exposing the cruelties of the legal system, owe much in their concept to Honoré Daumier. In turn, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec looked up to Forain. His illustrations particularly to books by his friend the notorious symbolist/decadent J.K. Huysmans brought considerable acclaim, while his bitingly witty cartoons for <em>Le Figaro</em> and <em>Le Courrier Francais</em> made him a household name. Additionally, his portrait lithographs of Auguste Renoir and Ambroise Vollard are described in his Grove Art Online entry as ‘brilliant’. The same source notes how ‘he resumed etching in 1902 but changed his subject matter to concentrate on religious and courtroom subjects of great drama and deep feeling, expressed with bravura technique’. Together with Huysmans, he regained his lost religious faith and this underpins the power of early 20th century etching/drypoints such as <em>Lourdes: Imploring before the grotto </em>(Te Papa 1952-0003-152), <em>Pieta</em> (1967-0002-12) and several other prints in our collection, not least this one.

This etching/drypoint is essentially about the sense of emptiness and desolation felt by onlookers following the Crucifixion. Calvary - the title of the work - is  just outside the walls of Jerusalem and is its traditional site, as stated in the Gospels.

The best statement on <em>Calvaire</em> comes from Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum: "The subject is, I think, without a precedent in religious art. There are no crosses; the only trace of the tragedy just enacted is the ladder held erect by a group of workmen on the right, who stand with heads bent in sympathetic reverence and sorrow while the Mater Dolorosa, bowed with grief, is led away from the scene by two of her nearest and dearest". Forain’s use of negative space is particularly modernist and eloquent. Less is more. This is a radically modern interpretation of an age old theme, and Forain both as a Christian and as a ‘man of the Left’ comes over in the grieving foreground workmen.

See:

Campbell Dodgson, <em>Forain: Draughtsman, Lithographer and Etcher </em>(New York, 1936)

Wikipedia, 'Jean-Louis Forain', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Forain

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   April 2018