38. Henri Marius-Camille Bouvet, Study for “Around a Lamp”

From his earliest days as an artist, Henri Bouvet displayed an intense interest in the nuances of light. As one commentator noted, “It is as if he was determined to adhere to the academic style but with the sensibility of an Impressionist.”¹

The Weisberg drawing of an elderly woman seated near a table lamp bears out this observation. It is a study for Around a Lamp (fig. 1), a somewhat peculiar painting from 1902 that recalls an effect seen in lensless or pinhole photography, where the image fades into a black background (fig. 2).² In the painting, the woman reads by lamplight, which she shares with a younger woman doing needlework and a bespectacled man who smokes a long pipe while inspecting a strip of paper, perhaps a record of the day’s transactions. Already in the drawing, Bouvet anticipated the gloom of the painting as he applied long, bowed strokes to indicate darkness closing in on the older woman’s head.

As a young man, Bouvet studied classics before enrolling in Lyon’s École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in 1878. After about three years he moved on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. There he studied briefly under Alfred Roll and Eugène Carrière. In 1892 he began participating regularly in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He won a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and became a member of the Salon jury in 1909.

Popular in France and abroad, Bouvet was a versatile artist who adjusted his style to suit his patrons and evolving tastes. By turns, he could be a naturalist, an impressionist, or a symbolist. He produced landscapes (especially along the Mediterranean Sea), portraits, genre scenes, and still-lifes, often evoking Belle Époque luxury and gaiety. His willingness to experiment is evident in the claustrophobic composition of Around a Lamp, where he departed from the glamour to explore a humble subject in which lamp oil is burned to serve the needs of three people.

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