Documents associated with: 101st exhibition, Ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, Palais des Champs Elysées, Paris, 1883
Record 11 of 13
System Number: 05221
Date: [1892/1895][1]
Author: Sâr Peladan[2]
Place: [Paris]
Recipient: JW
Place: [Paris?]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler R121
Document Type: ALS
ROSÆ CRUCIS TEMPLI ORDO
AD ROSAM PER CRUCEM, AD
CRUCEM PER ROSAM IN EA, IN EIS,
GEMMATUS RESURGAM.
[coat of arms; crown over shield with winged symbol of cross on a wreath, above a goblet]
NON NOBIS, NON NOBIS, SED
NOMMIS [sic?] TUI GLORIÆ SOLÆ.
AMEN.
GESTE ESTHÉTIQUE DITE:
SALON & SOIRÉES DE LA ROSE-CROIX
GRAND MAÎTRISE Peladan[3] / AU SEIGNEUR Whistler / GRAND PRIEURÉ Cte A. de la Rochefoucauld[4]
DEVANT LE GRAAL, LE BEAUSÉANT, LA ROSE CRUCIFÈRE
Seigneur
L'ordre souhaite votre présence & vous invite, avec un grand respect a son Salon[5].
La rare indépendance que vous avez maintes fois prouvée, votre conference sur l'art[6] qui a retenti en Angleterre vous indiquaient autant que votre beau talent à notre choix
Personnellement j'ai traité de chef d'oeuvre en 1883 dont l'artiste le portrait de votre mère[7], oeuvre rappelant par sa severite intense le Miracle de la sainte epine de Philippe de Champagne[8]
Je vous salue
Peladan
This document is protected by copyright.
Translation:
Sir
The order requests your presence and invites you, with great respect, to their Salon.
The rare independence that you have proved many times, your lecture on art which resounded throughout England, as well as your fine talent, have indicated our choice.
Personally I considered your masterpiece in 1883 to be the portrait of your mother, a work recalling in its intense severity Philippe de Champagne's Miracle of the blessed thorn.
I salute you
Peladan
Notes:
1. [1892/1895]
Dated by JW's known association with the recipient.
2. Sâr Peladan
Josephin, known as Sâr Peladan (1859-1918), Grand Master of the Order of the Rosicrucians, writer on art [more].
3. Peladan
This is a signature.
4. Cte A. de la Rochefoucauld
Marie Joseph Auguste Antoine, Comte de la Rochefoucauld (b. 1862) [more]. This is a signature.
5. Salon
Six exhibitions were organized by Péladan and his followers in Paris between 1892 and 1897. They were a major focal point of the occultist and Catholic tendencies in French Symbolist art, and grew out of the Ordre de la Rose + Croix du Temple et du Graal ou de la Rose + Croix Catholique, founded by Péladan to promote the esoteric within Catholicism and to conquer materialism within modern society. The Salons de la Rose + Croix were conceived and presented by Péladan as gestes esthétiques, a synthesis of the visual arts, literature and music in the spirit of Richard Wagner, whom Péladan venerated, and echoing the Chansons de geste of medieval literature.
6. conference
Presumably JW's 'Ten o'clock' Lecture, which was delivered in Princes Hall, London, on 20 February 1885, and on several occasions later in the year.
7. le portrait de votre mère
Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother (YMSM 101) was exhibited at the 101st exhibition, Ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, Palais des Champs Elysées, Paris, 1883, where it was awarded a third-class medal.
8. Miracle de la sainte epine de Philippe de Champagne
Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674), artist [more], Miracle of the blessed thorn. Jesus Christ was crowned in mockery with a crown of thorns, and this crown was said to have survived miraculously and to grow leaves. Miracles were associated with relics; for instance Marguerite Périer, Pascal's niece, was cured of a fistula lacrymalis on 24 March 1656, after her eye was touched with a sacred relic, supposed to be a thorn from the crown of Christ. No painting by Philippe de Champagne is known by this title, but it may be one of at least five versions of La Sainte Face / Le Voile de Veronique in which the crown lies at the foot of St Veronica (see Dorival, Bernard, Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674), Paris, 1976 (cat. nos. 65, 2043 bis, 260, 261, 813).