Two farmers plow rhythmic furrows in the earth, with the help of a team of horses, God’s creatures. They appear harmoniously engaged within the wondrous surroundings: distant hills and soaring trees, which seem close to the heavens, even above swirling clouds in a luminous sky. Under the trees, a small country church sits quietly on the left of the scene; its consecrated presence appears solid and enduring, subsumed within the cathedral that is God’s creation. The scene evokes a visual representation of faith and nature in relationship.
Charles-Marie Dulac was a Symbolist painter and printmaker working in France, who was strongly influenced by Saint Francis of Assisi’s panentheistic views of God and nature, holding that God pervades all of the universe.1 Beautifully evident in this exquisite lithograph, Dulac expresses a poetic, lyrical connection between the transcendent nature of God and the material reality of humanity and God’s creation.
Dulac is a little-known artist who lived a tragically short life, but left a remarkable artistic and spiritual legacy in his splendid lithographs, which express an idealization of God’s divine landscape. Dulac began his career as a decorative artist and created scene painting for many theatrical and operatic performances. He developed lead poisoning around 1890, as a result of working with lead-white pigment in industrial studios, and this illness would tragically end his life at the young age of 33.2 Upon discovering his illness, Dulac experienced a profound spiritual and religious conversion and joined the Third Order of Saint Francis. He was buried in his monk’s habit.3 Saint Francis of Assisi’s close communion with nature was deeply inspirational to Dulac, an influence which can be readily detected in the evocative lithographs he created in the final years of his life.
The knowledge of the artist creating this image with awareness of his impending death, fortified by his fervent faith, adds a preciousness to the power of the image. It’s rare, too, to be able to experience artwork which is known to be a pure statement of faith. Reflecting his closely held Franciscan ideals of humility and piety, Dulac eschewed monetary gain for his artwork,4 despite being active in the professional art world.
The artist wrote:
“Servir, louer Dieu, chercher à le faire aimer davantage avec ce qu'il vous a été donné de comprendre et de savoir faire. . .Je suis un intermédiare bienheureux.”5 [To serve, to praise God, to seek to make Him loved more with what you have been given to understand and know how to do. . . I am a happy intermediary.]
Jesu Via et Vita Nostra/Jesu Thesaurus Fidelium is plate six in a set of nine color lithographs that Dulac made in 1894 titled Le Cantique des Créatures (The Canticle of Creatures), inspired by St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun. In each image, Dulac worked from direct inspiration of a Franciscan verse along with liturgical text. His articulation of each verse through landscape embeds religious import into the nature scene itself. The present impression is a state proof image of the sixth plate, one of only about twenty such impressions, with additional work in the tint stone, to make the sky look more dramatic, made after the edition of one hundred impressions.6 The series of nine color lithographs were printed by the artist with muted colors heightened by delicate tones.
Care of the earth is not a new concept in human history; St. Francis is a primary early voice of respect for nature, as it expresses God's divinity to us here on earth. His inspired piece the Canticle of the Sun flourished in the mind of Dulac, who went on to create this image, part of a remarkable series of lithographs on the subject. In this image, Dulac brings forth the majestic beauty of sky meeting earth, energy stirring the quiet world, and light flicking the breath of wind.
Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord!
All praise is yours, all, glory, all honor
And all blessing.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy
To pronounce your name.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first, my Lord, Brother Sun
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright
And precious and fair.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather’s moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.7
The gleaming sun, peeking through the trees, visually glorifies God and all of creation; and even the tempestuousness of nature, the tension of calm and fury, seem captured by Dulac in the swirling sky and solid earth. The canticle expresses that the sun is a not only gift from God, illuminating God and the heavens, but also allows us to glimpse God, bearing God’s likeness as radiant, life-giving light. Even the weather, Francis poetically expounds, allows God to experience and “cherish” all of God’s own creation, moving through the world with power and energy. When artists are able to truly invite the viewer into an experience of wonder and mystery, simultaneously explaining and exploring, magical things can occur inside ourselves. This brilliant joining of literary, theological, and artistic impulses approaches the sublime. Here, we are invited to contemplate the marvel of creation, with powerful interpretation of humanity. This is when art can change us.
Dulac’s ethereal work exhibits an interesting bridge between the naturalism of the Impressionists and the emotionality of the Symbolists.8 In Jesu Via et Vita Nostra, definite natural and earthly forms are visible, but their partly abstracted composition is joined with pulsing, swirling lines and multicolored areas of tone. Dulac’s passionate calling to creating art that expressed his profound faith and the immense beauty of God’s creation are joined in this image. Although there is an escapism in the idyllic images of Dulac and many of his contemporary Symbolists, in his The Canticle of Creatures series, Dulac eloquently presents such idyll as deeply spiritual imagery of nature, revelations of the divine.
The original version of this article appeared in Inspiring Generosity: Stories of Faith and Grace in Art (Joanna R. Lindell, "Jesu Via et Vita Nostra/Jesu Thesaurus Fidelium (Jesus, Our Path and Life/Jesus, Treasure of the Faithful)," in Inspiring Generosity: Stories of Faith and Grace in Art, edited by Louise Kertesz (Minneapolis: Books & Projects LLC, 2018): 200-203.)
[1] Patricia Eckert Boyer and Phillip Dennis Cate, L’Estampe Originale: Artistic Printmaking in France 1893–1895 (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers,1991): 53.
[2] Elizabeth Prelinger, “Charles Dulac’s Suite de Paysages,” Print Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (1995): 41.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Taube G. Greenspan, “Charles Marie Dulac: The Idyllic and Mystical Landscape of Symbolism,” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1982): 164.
[5] From a letter of the artist, cited in Greenspan, 164.
[6] Bernard Derroitte, dealer information sheet.
[7] Saint Francis of Assisi, The Canticle of the Sun.
[8] Symbolism began as a literary movement in France and was adopted in the artwork of a young generation of artists who rejected the trend of Naturalism in the work of their contemporaries (such as the impressionists and realists, who were intent to objectively represent the natural world). Personal expression and emotion were the primary goal for Symbolists, who hoped to convey emotional experiences through line and color in their compositions. Some of the Symbolists’ subject matter arose from the depths of unconscious feelings, and the passion of these artists lay in their hope of conveying such impulses in their work through feeling and form.