Doug De La Matter, a reader of this blog, sent me the answer to my question: Who painted the image I pin in front of my computer?an image I find profoundly evocative of the creative process? (See my post below.)
The artist, it turns out, is Evariste Vital Luminais, from Nantes, France (1821-1896), and the name of the painting is “Enervés Jumièges,” which refers to an ancient and tragic legend about the sons of Clovis II.
Frankly, I don’t really want to know what the painting represents because I’ve created my own story around it. What I do find quite interesting, however, is the evolution of the work.
The first draft
The first study for the painting is, I’ve read, of torture. (No! Don’t tell me that.)
The second draft
Second image shows a boy grieving:
The final
There are two versions of the final. The first, “The Sons of Clovis II,” has a hopeless, leaden quality …
… quite different from the second, which is the one that “speaks” to me. In this one I like the way the man on the left stares into space in such a focussed way. I like to think he’s on the edge of waking, thinking … thinking … .
For more on these evocative paintings, see this article on Wikipedia. For more on the work of Evariste Vital Luminais, click here.
Thank you, Doug! He revealed that he was able to solve the mystery by posting the image on LinkedIn Questions and within 10 minutes was directed to images of tineye.com. Another person supplied a translation of a Wiki entry. All of which proves how incredible powerful Net research can be.
A note on TinEye.com: this is an amazing search engine. You can upload an image, and it will tell you where else it is on the Net. Artists use it to make sure that their work isn’t being used without permission, but I will find it useful, I’m sure, to track down the name and artist of an image.
