Charles-Marie Dulac was a French artist whose work reflects his deeply spiritual and mystical vision of nature. Initially trained as a wallpaper designer, he later studied under several painters and gained success at the Salon in 1889. However, his career was marked by personal tragedy when he suffered from lead poisoning as a result of working with white lead. Aware that his life would be cut short, Dulac embraced Catholicism and adopted an ascetic lifestyle that transformed his artistic focus.
By the early 1890s, Dulac shifted away from traditional Christian iconography and the representation of the human figure, choosing instead to concentrate on landscapes. He believed that nature held the power to offer spiritual revelations, and his work revolved around his ambition to express “the soul of nature”, as celebrated by the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. His landscapes were inspired by his travels to monasteries in France and Italy, where he immersed himself in the study of early Italian Renaissance frescoes.
Dulac’s works are characterised by intense spiritual Symbolism, and his landscapes often feature vivid colours imbued with a deep symbolic meaning. His notable lithographic series Landscapes (1892-1893) and The Canticle of Creatures (1894) reflect this mystical approach. Unfortunately, his life was cut short when he died at the age of 33, just as he was preparing to create a monastic community of artists. A retrospective of his work was held posthumously in 1899.
One of his most significant works, Le Grand-Rocher (Fontaine-de-Vaucluse), drawn around 1893, captures the spiritual intensity of the site of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. Our intense pastel drawing depicts the Sorgue River emerging from a steep cliff. Dulac’s work avoids picturesque details by focusing instead on the essential elements of the earth, the sky, and water: by creating a transcendent landscape, the artist expressed his faith and his belief in the divine presence within nature.