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Excerpt |
Chaminade
Lore
Herbert Kramer, SM.
439 pp. $10.00
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From the Maryhurst Messenger of
April, 1951
Two Authentic Portraits
I would like to devote this month's article to the portraits actually made of Father Chaminade during his lifetime.
Two are still extant that are certainly original. They are not perfect, and they might not bring forth the qualities that we of 1951 would like to find in them; but they were made in Bordeaux and in Father Chaminade's presence, and the Marianists living there considered them faithful resemblances to their spiritual father.
The first is a lithograph seven and a half inches high, drawn by Armand-Julien Pallière in 1827 when Father Chaminade was 66 years old. It was reproduced in the souvenir card published in 1897 for the centenary of Father Chaminade's exile in Saragossa, and it guided the sculptor Callède when he executed the bronze statue of our Founder for the Madeleine in Bordeaux.
Pallière belonged to a family of artists but was less talented than his brother Léon, who died in 1820 at the age of 33. I have not yet found any other works done by Armand-Jullien, but I have discovered a letter of his sent on a ship named Le Bordelais from Rio de Janiero in 1823, four years before he sketched Father Chaminade. In this letter he expresses his enthusiasm for lithography that had been successfully introduced into France only in 1814: "I am crazy about this type of work, and I have had a press and all its utensils sent from France." Pallière was one of the first artists of Bordeaux to work in this new medium.
Earliest portrait of Venerable Chaminade, drawn in 1827 by Pallière (1784-1862). It is a lithograph of which a certain number of originals still exist, the one photographed for this article being preserved in the Municipal Archives of Bordeaux. This portrait emphasizes our Founder's serenity as a man of faith
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