Jacques Emile Blanche, 1861-1942

The Symbolist poet Francis Viélé was born in Virginia on the 26th of May 1863 to American parents. He was the second son of Thérésa Griffin and General Egbert-Ludovicus Viélé, named military governor of Virginia by Lincoln during the secessionist war. Having studied at West Point and become an architect in New York, Egbert-Ludovicus Viélé was the co-designer of Central Park and also created the Haarlem Canal, reuniting the Hudson and East Rivers in 1895. In 1872, Francis Viélé-Griffin’s parents divorced and Francis followed his mother to France. Francis pursued his studies at the College Stanislas in 1878 where he developed a friendship with the poet Henri de Régnier.

Viélé-Griffin’s life was entirely devoted to poetry. By means of his poems and articles, he became a champion of symbolism and free verse. From 1886 to 1829, he regularly published poems, such as  Les Cynes of 1887-1892, Joie of 1889, La Chevauchée d’Yeldis of 1893, Partenza of 1899, L’Amour Sacré of 1903, La Lumière de Grèce of 1912. Blanche also expounded and defended his ideas in a journal that he founded with Henri de Régnier in 1890, titled Entretiens Politiques et Littéraires, which published Bakounine as well as Valéry, Gide or Verhaeren. Francis also published numerous articles for journals such as Lutèce, l’Ermitage or the Mercure de France.

A close friend of Henri de Régnier and his wife, Marie de Hérédia, he often frequented the homes of poets, writers and painters of his time, such as Mallarmé, who he greatly admired (he later became the president of the Académie Mallarmé), as well as his compatriots Whistler, Paul Adam and Francis Jammes. Andre Gide was one of his closest friends and wrote a long passage about him, from which the following extract is taken: 'There is nothing more frank or more honest than Griffin; and I don’t want to say that, contrarily to him, Régnier was twisted, perverse, and artificial, certainly not! He affirmed himself by means of jokes, humorously, and despite his sincere love for our country and for the soft spokeness of France, he retained something green and unsubmissive in his allure, he felt something savage about his New World...'

Francis was also linked to the Belgian Symbolist movement and was friends with Maurice Maeterlinck and Emil Verhaeren, two great Belgian poets that were among the masters of Symbolist poetry. Francis Viélé-Griffin, a member of the Académie Belge, figures in the famous paining of Théo van Rysselberghe, titled La Lecture, which portrays some of the greatest Belgian and French scholars and intellectuals of the twentieth century (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gand).

The work of Viélé-Griffin, now little known, was very much appreciated by his contemporaries, who admired the beauty and fluidity of his verse, and felt the sentiment of joy that came from it.

In 1891, Viélé-Griffin settled in the Château de Nazelle in Touraine with his family. It is probably on the terrace of this castle that Blanche situated his portrait. Francis Viélé-Griffin is seated, an open book on his knees, surrounded by his wife Marie-Louise Brocklé (1864-1940) and their four daughters. Francoise (1894-1935) and Edmée (1886-1978) are in light-coloured dresses, leaning on their father; Antoinette (1888-1964) and Odette (1890-1964, future wife of poet Guy Lavaud) are dressed in dark clothes and lean closely on their mother. The two groups are united by a play of hands, surrounding the book held by the father. The natural setting beautifies this grand and elegant family portrait that is both intimate and worldly, evoking the grand English portraits of Gainsborough or Reynolds.