Victor Hugo

Exhibited by Ambroise Duchemin

Material Pen and brown ink, wash and white gouache highlights on paper

Dimensions 6.2 × 5.7 cm

Price Available upon inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

Our Cathedral Under the Storm distills the very essence of Victor Hugo’s graphic imagination. On a remarkably intimate scale, the spectral silhouette of a Gothic structure, rendered with the dramatic interplay of ink, wash, and white heightening, reveals the singularity of Hugo’s artistic vision. Through his probing exploration of every nuance of brown ink, he conjures a mystical atmosphere that hints at an inward, vertiginous plunge into the unconscious.

Provenance

Paul Meurice (1818-1905)
Marthe Meurice (1863-1955)
Annette Clemenceau (1895-1979)
Private collection, by descent

Literature

Bernadette Grynberg & Jean Massin, Victor Hugo. Œuvre graphique, 1967-1969, vol. II, no. 907.
Jean-Jacques Lebel & Marie-Laure Prévost, Victor Hugo: du chaos dans le pinceau, exhibition catalogue, Madrid and Paris, 2000–2001, p. 232, no. 181.