Luc Olivier Merson

Private Collection, Bordeaux, in 1892.

Salon de Paris, 1884, no. 1698;

Salon de Nantes, 1886;

Salon de Bordeaux, 1887, no.394.

D. Caillé, 'Les artistes nantais : Luc-Olivier Merson', in Revue de Bretagne de Vendée et d'Anjou, 36^e année, tome VII, June 1892, pp. 419-420;

G. Larroumet, Petits portraits et notes d'art, deuxième série, Paris 1900, pp. 271-272;

L'étrange Monsieur Merson, cat. exh., Rennes, 2009, p. 96, ill. 30 (as not localized).

Originally from Nantes, Luc-Olivier Merson joined Pils’s studio in Paris; awarded the Prix de Rome in 1869, he undertook a long journey through Italy, where he discovered the works of the great masters of the Renaissance. When he returned to France, he settled on the banks of the Loire and focused on historical, mythological, military and religious subjects.

Initially exhibiting at the Paris Salon, from 1885 onwards Merson preferred the provincial Salons, more suitable for his small-scale works of religious subjects. L’angelo pittore is among the last works he sent to Paris, for the 1884 exhibition; it subsequently appeared in the Salons in Nantes and then Bordeaux, where it seems to have found a buyer. Its location had been unknown since 1892, and is described accordingly in the catalogue for the exhibition devoted to the artist at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes (see Literature).

Merson here depicts the legend of the painting angel who took advantage of Fra Angelico falling asleep to borrow his brushes and complete the face of the Virgin in the fresco of the vault of the Basilica di San Marco in Florence. The evocation of a dreamlike world associated with an angelic vision is very typical of Merson’s oeuvre.