Series paintings of times of the day and the seasons have been popular, but those trying to depict the whole of life are unusual and challenging. This weekend I look at some of the better attempts to tell the story of the journey of life. Because some of these series consist of more than five paintings, I here show selections of those longer accounts.

One of the earliest painted accounts of life is Nicolas Poussin’s series The Seven Sacraments. His first version of this was started in about 1636 as a commission for his patron and mentor Cassiano dal Pozzi, and was completed four years later.

The first in the series shows The Baptism of Christ, as an unusual example of a baptismal scene. The white dove of the Holy Spirit above the figure of Christ is one link across some of the others in the series.

The white dove reappears in Poussin’s genteel account of Marriage.

The series is completed by Extreme Unction, showing the sacrament being administered to a cadaveric man as his family are gathered around his deathbed.

Although several of William Hogarth’s series were biographical, such as his first two of A Harlot’s Progress (c 1731) and its compliment A Rake’s Progress (1732-5), none attempted to depict the whole journey of life from birth to death.

The next is probably Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life, painted in 1839-42. Like Poussin before him, Cole wasn’t satisfied with painting this cycle of four phases. When he was in Rome in 1842, fearing that he wouldn’t see his series again, nor be allowed to exhibit it, he painted a second version, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and shown here. He had already painted a precursor cycle, The Course of Empire, in 1833-36, telling the story of an idealised civilisation, inspired by Byron’s poem Pilgrimage (1812-8).

Cole’s first series The Voyage of Life was commissioned to show a Christian allegory of the stages of life. He divided this into childhood, youth, manhood, and old age.

Childhood establishes the scene: the lush coastal undercliff, rich in flowers and the vibrant green of vegetation. A boat has emerged from a large cave in the cliff, symbolising the mother’s birth canal and the process of birth. A young baby is standing in the boat, with an angel at its tiller. A carved angelic figure forming the prow holds out an hourglass as the symbol for time.

In Youth, the young man has taken the helm of the boat, leaving the angel on the bank. The morning light is bright, and the weather fair. The young man is navigating the boat along the river, through lush waterside meadows and avenues, towards a distant vision of a celestial temple. The coastal cliffs are now in the background on the right, and in the centre distance is a rocky mountain spire.

By Manhood, the hero has noticeably matured, and his boat is on a fast-flowing river just approaching dangerous rapids passing through a rocky chasm. It is now dusk, and the angel is watching over from a break in the dark and forboding clouds. The man no longer holds the tiller, indeed the rudder is missing altogether, but both hands are clasped in prayer, as he looks anxiously up towards the heavens. In the foreground on the right are twisted trees, splintered by storms, with autumnal leaves.

Old Age shows the man in the boat far older, bald and with a grey beard. His boat is now in placid waters at the coast again, making no way. The boat itself is battered, its figurehead missing. He sits in the boat talking with the angel, who beckons him up through a parting in the black clouds, to a distant angel, far up in the heavens, rising through beams of sunshine towards brightness at the top left.

The painter who came closest to creating an epic in his works must be Louis Janmot, whose series Le Poème de l’âme (Poem of the Soul) consists of no less than 34 images, of which the first eighteen are painted in oils, and the remaining sixteen are in charcoal. Miraculously, the complete series is still together in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France. Although the captions don’t report it, each of the oil paintings is 130-145 cm in height, and 140-145 cm in width, although I have also seen them stated as being much larger, approximately 394 x 500 cm.

Like Blake and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Janmot was also an accomplished poet, and his series is accompanied by an epic poem of nearly three thousand lines. He had a deep Catholic faith, and both the poem and the paintings are framed within his beliefs.

The series opens in heaven, with the mystical formation of a human soul, shown in symbolic form as a baby. This takes place under the watch of the Holy Trinity, although the three figures surrounding the newborn soul include a woman who represents love. Around this tight group are seemingly endless ranks of angels.

The newborn soul is brought down to earth by its guardian angel. This view, midway between heaven and earth, shows the succession of newborn souls being taken down to earth in the centre, and the judgement of the dead taking place at the side. The souls of the virtuous are seen being accompanied back up to heaven by their guardian angels, at the left. On the right are those destined for hell.

Below, on the right, is the figure of Prometheus bound, being attacked by an eagle. Prometheus is a strange figure from classical mythology to appear in this series, but a strong symbol of eternal suffering.

This is set by the Lake of Moras, where the mother sits with the newborn soul on her lap. Its guardian angel is kneeling in prayer for the mother and the soul of her new child. This painting combines the images of the annunciation to the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, in a unique way.

As the child grows up, Janmot represents it as a duality of boy, shown here in pink, and girl, in white symbolising purity and innocence. The pair are shown at play, picking flowers, in an idyllic country landscape during the spring.

This mystical duality continues through most of the rest of the oil paintings. At times, the pair appear to be brother and sister, or even lovers, but as we will see in tomorrow’s sequel, in the end they represent the earthly body (boy) and the spirit (girl). They are usually colour-coded, the boy wearing pink, and the girl white.

References

Poussin’s Sacraments
Cole’s Voyage of Life
Janmot’s Poem of the Soul 1
Janmot’s Poem of the Soul 2
Janmot’s Poem of the Soul 3
Janmot’s Poem of the Soul 4