The crise catholique: Avant-garde religious painting in France, 1890--1912

In the 1890s, French Catholics were confronted with the decreasing relevance of their religion in society, a situation they called the crise catholique . The advances of science challenged some of the basic tenets of Catholicism, and the government of the Third Republic began to oppose the role that the Church played in French education and politics. During the period 1890--1912, religion moved from the public sphere into a more private realm, as important events, including the enactment of the Law of the Separation of Church and State in 1905, changed the role of Catholicism in French society.;This dissertation considers the changing nature of religious painting in the context of this history, from attempts in the 1890s to find a reconciliation of religious painting and avant-garde style, to the gradual elimination of religious painting from avant-garde salons in the twentieth century. Chapter One introduces the history of the crise catholique in the period 1890--1897. Chapter Two considers Maurice Denis's efforts to create an avant-garde form of religious art in his early easel paintings and theoretical writings. Chapter Three addresses Josephin Peladan's Salons de la Rose+Croix and Peladan's attempts to modernize Catholicism through his theory of occult Catholicism. Chapter Four relates the continuing history of the crise catholique in the period 1898--1912. Chapter Five considers the gradual codification of religious art in the twentieth century, especially as it was embodied in the later work of Maurice Denis and the art criticism of the journal L'Occident. Chapter Six contrasts the painting of Georges Rouault in the early twentieth century to the prevailing trends described in Chapter Five, and assesses Rouault's attempt to create a new and private expression of religious sentiment in painting. The conclusion examines Marcel Duchamp's 1912 drawing Vierge as a response to the changing nature of religious art in this period.;This dissertation shows that Catholicism was an important backdrop for a variety of developments in the avant-garde at the turn of the century in France, and it documents important changes in the nature of religious painting and in attitudes towards subject matter in general in the twentieth century.