Rest On the Flight Into Egypt/Luc-Olivier Merson

Rest On The Flight Into Egypt/Luc Olivier Merson/courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Mass.

This past weekend, my wife set time aside to work on her Christmas cards. Several years ago, she fell in love with a card based on a 19th century painting that appealed to both her knowledge of both art history and Ancient Egyptian history. We set out to find out what we could about the painting and our trail led us to the French academic artist Luc-Olivier Merson.

Merson had everything going for him in his career except how history would define his career. His father was a gifted Parisian artist and as his son showed the same interest and talent, he was tutored in the discipline under a number of well respected teachers, as well as in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. By the late 1860’s, he regularly entered into Salon competitions and won the Prix De Rome in 1869. Because of the prize, he was able to spend three years studying art in Rome.

Merson was an exquisite draftsman, as most graduates of the French academies were. His early works reflect France’s 19th century interest in Romanticism and some of the stylings reflect the visual ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists as youthful, naked people stand in for thematic ideas, although the ideas were plucked from history rather than addressing any contemporary issues. This pursuit of the past led him to create paintings based on the birth of Christ, including his well-known Rest On The Flight Into Egypt.

Merson’s love of draftsmanship in his work created an unintended sense of clutter as his paintings were envisioned in outdoor settings, giving an atmospheric illumination to almost everything blade of grass, every rock and every piece of clothing. That’s what makes The Rest On The Flight Into Egypt so unique in Merson’s oeuvre. Because of it’s nighttime desert location, the painting looks simple and sparse. Joseph, sleeping along on the desert sand, is vaguely illuminated by some source, probably the stars, while Mary and Jesus rest in the arms of an incredibly undersized Sphinx. The only warm light glows from the Christ child.

It has been suggested, that Merson was under the intellectual spell of the Symbolists, a European artistic movement that appeared in both literature and painting. The Symbolists rejected the aesthetic trend towards realism, as seen in the urban paintings of the Impressionists and the realistic novels of writers like Emile Zola. Instead, they focused their desires upon form over function, but regardless of their rejection of common reality, this highly aesthetic style did create some lovely works, including some of Merson’s own work.

Merson was a highly regarded artist in his day and as he grew older and more successful in his craft, his focus on design led in a number of unexpected directions including interior design and mural work in the homes of the wealthy, illustrating an edition of one of France’s most beloved novels: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and designing postage stamps and currency for the French government. In his old age, he was even awarded the Legion of Honor from his country for his currency work but by the time he passed away, the changes in art history had squashed his reputation and left this well known man completely unknown. As it is usually said, “History is written by the winners”. but how the winners choose to observe the losers is a fickle thing. With only a few exceptions, the modern art movement chose to ignore the trends of academic art or with anything that had nothing to do with growth of Modernism. In this one sided movement of history, a lot of good and successful artists have been ignored. At least, at this time of year, a few people can take the time to remember Merson.

Joyeux Noel.

Other works of Fine Art you may enjoy:

The Connections Of Mary Cassatt

Bend In the River, an oil painting

Silence In the City, a cityscape painting