DJ Geribo

I found Seraphine while searching through movies on Netflix. I decided it was one that I wanted to watch since it had to do with a French woman who worked as a housekeeper and became a self-taught artist. I love reading about how non-traditionally trained (i.e., self-taught) artists become famous, or at least successful.  

Based on a true story, Seraphine Louis, a housekeeper by trade, was a hard-working common woman who worked long hours making barely enough to pay her rent and buy food. But she would often forego these necessities so that she could purchase paints and boards to paint on. She would work on her paintings long into the night, creating amazing works of art. Her inspiration was nature, and her paintings were full of leaves and floral arrangements using paints that she made herself with a secret formula that has withstood the test of time for durable vividness.

Considered a modern primitive (or naïve) in style, she was discovered at the age of 48 by a tenant who was renting an apartment that she cleaned. Wilhelm Uhde, a German art collector, loved her work and purchased everything she bought. In 1914, the war between France and Germany created an unwelcome situation for Mr. Uhde and he was forced to leave France. And then in 1927 while visiting Chantilly France, Wilhelm Uhde visited an exhibition of local artists and immediately recognized Seraphine’s work. She would be about 63 at this time. 

According to the movie, he again purchased her work, she was painting larger now, and as she made more money she began purchasing new clothes, redecorating her apartment and additional rooms, sending the bill to her patron, Mr. Uhde. When she wanted to purchase a home that was beyond his means, Mr. Uhde put a stop to her out-of-control spending. In the middle of the Great Depression, Wilhelm Uhde and other patrons could no longer purchase her art. 

In 1932, she was admitted to a psychiatric ward for chronic psychosis. There was no outlet for her art and in 1942 she died there, friendless and alone.  

Wilhelm Uhde exhibited her work in 1932 in Paris in an exhibition called “The Modern Primitives” in 1937 in Paris, Zurich, and New York  in an exhibition called “The Popular Masters of Reality”, in 1942, “Primitives of the 20^th Century” exhibit in Paris, and in 1945, a solo exhibit of her work in Paris.