Louis Émile ADAN
(Paris, 1839-Paris, 1937)
 
A sermon in the church of the Bocca della verita, in Rome 
 
Oil on canvas 
Signed lower left 
97 x 130 cm 
1867  

Exhibitions:  
  
Salon de Paris of 1867 under number 5
  
Salon d’Arras of 1868 under number 1
  
Salon d’Amiens, according to a label on the back of the frame  

Son of the painter Hippolyte Benjamin Adan (1797-1876), a student of Delaroche, and Émilie Delarémanichère (1813-1885), Louis Émile Adan was born in Paris on March 26, 1839.  He began his art studies in the 1850s and then entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was a student of François Picot from the beginning of the 1850s and of Alexandre Cabanel probably from 1864 or soon after. Adan made his first submission to the Paris Salon in 1863. He would remain listed as a pupil of Cabanel in the booklets until 1886. As C.H. Stranahan recounts in his History of French Painting: “No fewer than 112 exhibitors at the Salon of 1886 signed themselves ‘Élève de Cabanel’. They are as varied in style as they are numerous, which is a testament to the greatness of their teacher as a master: he develops talents without making them slavish imitators.” Stranahan’s comments also indicate that Adan’s fellow students included military painters, orientalists, genre painters, and naturalists; surely an environment that encouraged wide-ranging aesthetic discussions among the young artists. Adan’s work in the 1860s embraced the dominant tradition of academicism. Indeed, the two paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon by Adan in 1867 - of which ours is one - are a clear homage to the academic painting carried by Ingres, with something premonitory, an early tinge of naturalism; we will speak about it later. This homage to Ingres, who died the same year on January 14, 1867, was undoubtedly intended not only to testify to Adan's admiration for the master, but also to his aspiration to perpetuate the tradition that Ingres represented. From the mid-1870s, when France began to rebuild itself after the ruin of the Franco-Prussian War, Adan seems to concentrate more and more on scenes of daily life, something that was already presented in our painting of 1867. He was rewarded for it in 1875 with a third medal at the Paris Salon. It was also during this period that he came across his only major decoration known to date: the monumental religious composition representing the Trinity in glory that he created in 1870 for the choir of the Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul church in Courbevoie. The whole thing was installed there in 1892.  In the 1880s and 1890s, Adan had a studio at 75 rue de Courcelles, which suggests that he was well established by then. During this decade, he concentrated on naturalist painting with a good number of rural scenes with an agrarian theme. He was again well rewarded: second medal in 1882 and gold medal in 1889 at the Paris Salon and regularly received favorable reviews. In the mid-1880s, Adan was actively involved in the naturalist movement where he was grouped with Jules Breton, Léon Lhermitte and Jules Bastien-Lepage in Stranahan's work. More recently, Adan was included in a Florentine exhibition in 2004 on naturalism and symbolism, again in the company of Léon Lhermitte.In addition to his production of paintings, ADAN was an excellent watercolourist and had the opportunity to illustrate several works in the 1880s such as the Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet or Un cœur simple by Gustave Flaubert for the best known. His reputation as a distinguished and collected painter, particularly in France and the United States - the collector Charles Warren Cram purchased several of his paintings exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1889 - was recognized in 1892 when he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and admitted in 1900 to sit on the jury of the Salon and the Salon des Artistes Français. The last decades of Adan's life are curiously obscure. His work was included in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915; and again in an exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. He continued to exhibit annually at the Paris Salon until his death in 1937. 
 
Bibliography:   
  
C. H. Stranahan, A History of French Painting from Its Earliest to its Latest Practice, including an Account of the French Academy of Painting, its Salons Schools of Instruction and Regulations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888) 401.  
  
C. H. Stranahan, A History of French Painting from Its Earliest to its Latest Practice, including an Account of the French Academy of Painting, its Salons Schools of Instruction and Regulations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888) 479. The Italian exhibition took place at the Galleria Vetrina (Florence) in 2004. See the exhibition catalog produced by Marco Fagioli and Francesca Marini, Description or Narration: Disegni Francesi tra Naturalismo  

Museums: Macon, Agen, Pau, Alençon, Lyon, Mulhouse, Rouen, Nice, Péronne, Nantes, Pfister Art Collection (Milwaukee), Widener University Art Gallery (Chester – Pennsylvania)…  

Concerning the place represented, it is the minor basilica of Rome known as Santa Maria in Cosmedin located in the southern part of the historic center of Rome, near the Tiber. It is a very old church built in the 6th century on the remains of the temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium. The church took the name of Schola Graeca in the 7th century following the installation of a community of Greek monks. They also participated in its decoration under Pope Adrian I. In homage to its appearance, it is now called "Cosmedin", from the Greek "Kosmidion" which would mean "ornamented".It was in 1971 that Pope Paul VI gave this minor basilica to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church as a place of worship in Rome.Architecturally, it is worth noting a remarkable medieval pavement from the old Saint Peter's Basilica. In the peristyle, at the entrance, is the famous Bocca della Verità. 

Acquired by the Fabre Museum - Montpellier