--- title: "Augustin Lesage: from the mine to painted architectures" description: "How Augustin Lesage built his paintings: mining, spiritualist networks, templates and the organisation of two canvases held at LaM." canonical: https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/augustin-lesage-paintings/ lang: en license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ translations: en: https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/augustin-lesage-paintings/ fr: https://chicodasilva.org/fr/articles/augustin-lesage-peintures/ pt: https://chicodasilva.org/pt/artigos/augustin-lesage-pinturas/ --- Art and artists # Augustin Lesage: from the mine to painted architectures How Augustin Lesage built his paintings: mining, spiritualist networks, templates and the organisation of two canvases held at LaM. Augustin Lesage’s first large canvas covered nine square metres. He worked on it from 1912 to 1913 while still employed as a coal miner in Pas-de-Calais. Its size created a domestic problem: according to LaM’s educational dossier, there was too little room at home to spread out the early paintings, so Lesage folded the canvas and worked in bands. The tiers of tiny motifs that now resemble imaginary façades also have a history of surface, space and labour.[^bio][^dossier] Lesage (1876–1954) said that spirits instructed him to paint. He took that explanation to congresses and public demonstrations, found support to leave the mine and exhibited in salons. Reading his paintings involves that spiritualist setting, alongside some quite material questions: how could he distribute hundreds of forms, maintain an axis across a canvas and bring a face into view within an ornamental field? ## A calling explained through spirits Born into a mining family in Auchel, Lesage followed the same occupation. The account recorded by the Collection de l’Art Brut places him at 35 when he heard a voice underground predicting that he would become a painter. Drawings followed, which he attributed to dead people, including his sister Marie, who had died aged three. The first canvas took months; he stopped painting in 1914 and resumed in 1916.[^bio] Other people shared the vocabulary of his account. Lesage read Léon Denis, attended spiritualist sessions and received patronage from Jean Meyer, editor of the *Revue spirite*. That support allowed him to leave the mine in 1923. In 1925 he showed a painting at the international spiritualist congress in Paris; the following year he exhibited *L’Esprit de la pyramide* at the Salon d’Automne. In 1927 he painted in public at the Institut métapsychique international.[^egypte] These encounters give some sense of his audience. Attributing the paintings to spirits gave Lesage a way to explain his activity; it also gave those around him a reason to observe, publicise and support the work. Readers, organisers and patrons gathered around the canvases. His passage from mining to painting took place within those relationships. ## How one band supports the next LaM’s educational dossier describes a method of construction using templates. Glasses and buttons supplied circular outlines, while rulers, set squares and a measuring tape helped regulate the forms. Textile motifs also entered the repertoire. The document connects the horizontal registers with the early need to fold the canvas and describes gradual progress across its surface.[^dossier] This changes what “automatic painting” can mean in Lesage’s case. The phrase need not suggest a hand racing across a canvas or an image made all at once. In the procedure described by the museum, repetition and measurement belong to a lengthy process. Lesage’s attribution of guidance to spirits coexisted with the use of tools that could repeat an interval or complete a circle. The dossier follows this method in *L’Esprit de la pyramide*, painted in 1926. In the two paintings reproduced below, made around 1930, the relationship between the tiny mark and the whole design continues to organise the surface. The tools described by the museum help explain how regularity could be built throughout the work. ## Composition: a centre built through correspondences ![Rows of tiny red, blue and pale motifs form two symmetrical masses and converge towards a point below; the canvas is set in a wooden frame.](https://chicodasilva.org/editorial/augustin-lesage/composition-640.jpg) *Composition, around 1930. Oil on canvas, 70 × 49 cm. Augustin Lesage. LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, 999.32.4. L'Aracine donation, 1999. Photograph: Cécile Dubart. [LaM collection record](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/composition-3).* In this *Composition*, from around 1930, two rounded forms occupy the top. A smaller arch between them encloses a pale figure; below, dozens of horizontal bands extend across almost the full width. Dark ground remains at the sides and in the gaps between the three upper volumes. At 70 × 49 cm, the painting is considerably smaller than Lesage’s first large canvas.[^composition] Within that space he multiplies differences of scale. From a distance the outline suggests a structure; close up, every tier contains tiny red, blue and pale shapes, some elongated, others almost circular. A broad band interrupts the small repeated units before another sequence begins. It is possible to follow a row from one side to the other without finding a narrative scene. The order changes below. Red and yellow bands slope down to a point, making the centre more pronounced. The vertical axis is not a continuous line drawn from top to bottom: the eye reconstructs it through correspondences between the sides. Horizontals spread the motifs out; the lower diagonals gather them together again. The architectural appearance grows from that arrangement. There are suggestions of storeys, niches and a base, yet the canvas describes no building one could walk through. It offers a succession of painted units that join and separate as the viewing distance changes. ## Egypt painted before the journey ![A pale-faced figure occupies the centre of a symmetrical composition with arches, bands of tiny motifs, feline heads, a harp on the left and a horse on the right.](https://chicodasilva.org/editorial/augustin-lesage/mysteres-egypte-640.jpg) *Les Mystères de l’Antique Egypte (The Mysteries of Ancient Egypt), 1930. Oil on canvas, 143 × 113 cm. Augustin Lesage. LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, 999.32.1. L'Aracine donation, 1999. Photograph: C. Thériez. [LaM collection record](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/les-mysteres-de-lantique-egypte).* *Les Mystères de l’Antique Egypte*, painted in 1930, measures 143 × 113 cm. A face with dark eyes and hair spreading on both sides occupies the upper centre. Below it, coloured bands descend towards a structure that seems to support several scenes. Faces, animals and objects appear amid repeated small strokes. LaM dates the introduction of faces and references to religions and ancient Egypt in Lesage’s painting from 1928. His journey to Egypt took place in 1939, nine years after this canvas.[^egypte] Egyptian imagery was already material for painting before it became a travel experience. That chronology prevents us from treating the canvas as a record of something he had just visited. Here symmetry accommodates different subjects. A harp occupies the left while a pale horse appears on the right. Two feline heads below turn towards the central construction. Compartments have similar positions and outlines, but the images inside them vary. Balance depends on that arrangement of areas, without requiring one half to copy the other. At the bottom, two crowned faces frame a smaller image. Painted doors and columns return the eye to a frontal architecture. The title is inscribed above this last band, within the painting. The words help direct a reading, although the visual field contains more than a single Egyptian identification can explain. Between the figured compartments, small marks continue to fill the spaces. They have a double function: they connect the surface and make the larger scenes stand out. Looking only for symbols misses these differences of scale; seeing only a pattern overlooks the interruptions made by faces and animals. ## An axis can also separate bodies [![Two elaborately plumed roosters confronting each other against a golden background. Cockfight, Chico da Silva, 1969, gouache on paper.](https://img.chicodasilva.org/jcc-031/chico-da-silva-cockfight-1969-gouache-on-paper-hardboard-53x67cm-joao-cunha-collection-jcc-031-chicodasilva.org-1280.jpg)](https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/cockfight-1969-031/) *[Cockfight (1969)](https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/cockfight-1969-031/), Chico da Silva João Cunha Collection.* The distinction between balance and mirroring takes another form in Chico da Silva’s *Cockfight*, painted in 1969. Two cockerels with curved necks face one another against yellow. Their beaks nearly meet; their feet reach into the opening between their bodies. The birds occupy corresponding positions, but their breasts and wings carry different designs. Their tails fall towards the corners with unequal visual weights. The confrontation creates an empty centre. In Lesage, the axis often contains a figure or structure, with compartments arranged around it. In Chico’s gouache, the yellow between the birds makes visible the distance they seek to cross. The similarity of arrangement helps locate a difference in action: Lesage’s forms align before us; the cockerels turn towards each other. ## The canvases’ different public lives Lesage’s paintings circulated in spiritualist settings and art exhibitions during his lifetime. They later entered art brut collections. The Collection de l’Art Brut holds his work in Lausanne; the two paintings reproduced here reached LaM through the L’Aracine donation in 1999.[^bio][^composition][^egypte] These are different ways of presenting the same work. At a spiritualist congress, a painting could be observed as a manifestation of the mediumship Lesage described. In a museum, attention turns towards its support, date, handling of paint and position among other works. The article on [naïve art, art brut and art singulier](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/naive-art-brut-singulier-differences/) follows that history of classification. In *Les Mystères*, Lesage placed the identification within the canvas itself, just above the lower façade. The museum repeats it in the record alongside a fact the painting does not contain: its arrival in the collection in 1999.[^egypte] [^bio]: Collection de l’Art Brut. [*Lesage, Augustin*](https://artbrut.ch/fr/autrices-et-auteurs/lesage-augustin). Dates, family background, account of the voice, first canvas in 1912–1913 and departure from the mine in 1923. [^dossier]: LaM. [*Augustin Lesage. Dossier pédagogique des collections*](https://www.musee-lam.fr/sites/default/files/2018-12/Augustin-Lesage.pdf), second PDF leaf, “Une composition ordonnée, entre abstraction et figuration”, and third and fourth leaves, “Contexte”. Templates, tools, folding the early canvases and spiritualist circles. The PDF has no printed page numbers. [^egypte]: LaM. [*Les Mystères de l’Antique Egypte*](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/les-mysteres-de-lantique-egypte), 1930, 999.32.1. Oil on canvas, 143 × 113 cm; L’Aracine donation, 1999. Record and “Notice” section: career, exhibitions, figures from 1928 and the 1939 journey. Photograph credit: C. Thériez. [^composition]: LaM. [*Composition*](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/composition-3), around 1930, 999.32.4. Oil on canvas, 70 × 49 cm; L’Aracine donation, 1999. Photograph credit: Cécile Dubart. ## Related reading - [Naïve art, art brut and art singulier: differences](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/naive-art-brut-singulier-differences/) - [Séraphine Louis: flowers and trees in an imagined world](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/seraphine-louis-paintings/) - [Primitive, Naïve, Indigenous](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/primitive-naif-indigenous/)