Maurice Chabas

Cave in Brittany, study for the painting The Virgins of the cliffs

1895

Maurice Chabas was born in Nantes on 26 September 1862 into a cultivated, art-loving family and was the elder brother of painter Paul-Émile Chabas. He trained first at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, then at the Académie Julian in Paris under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, where he refined his supple draughtsmanship. By the early 1890s he embraced Symbolism, exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français, the Société Nationale and the six Salons de la Rose+Croix, where his visionary canvases drew notice. Influenced by Swedenborgian and Theosophical ideas and by his friendship with Belgian mystic-painter Jean Delville, Chabas sought to reveal the invisible realities behind appearances. Around 1900 his Paris studio became a gathering place for poets, musicians and esoteric thinkers, reinforcing his conviction that art could be a bridge to the spirit. Public recognition followed with monumental commissions, notably the four frescoes L’Art de la soie for Lyon-Perrache station completed in 1905. After 1910 his palette lightened and his forms dissolved into luminous atmospheres that anticipated lyrical abstraction. In 1921 he published Les Psaumes d’Amour spirituel, a personal manifesto merging poetry and image. Settled in Versailles after the First World War, he pursued this inner quest until his death on 11 December 1947, and his works—now in collections such as the Musée d’Orsay—remain touchstones for Symbolist collectors.