The Strange Case of George Focus
The 17th century French artist Geoges Focus (1641-1708) began as a convential
artist, producing etchings influenced by Gaspard Dughet and with a look similar to prints
by Giovanni Grimaldi. In 2010, I acquired an etching at auction that had an old attrubition
to Dughet, but that attribution was spurious. A few years later I was able to identify
the artist as Georges Focus. Here is that etching:
"Herdsman in a Landscape".
At the time I could find little information on Focus. But, unexpectedly, much more information
has emerged. We know that Focus
went to Rome in 1666, then returned to France in 1669 and was admitted to the Royal
Academy in 1675. But sometime before 1685 he became insane and was confined for
the rest of his life to an institution known as "Les Petit Maisons". During his
confinement he produced an amazing group of drawings.
These drawings are quite fantastic and in addition have huge amounts of writing interwoven
with the figures:
they really constitute a sort of graphic novel.
His drawings, fortunately, were preserved but they attracted little attention until a
few years ago.
Recently there has been serious scholarly work on this artist and especially his "mad"
drawings. A recent major exhibit (over 80 sheets) of his drawings held at the
Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris closed on 6 Jan 2019. Here are a few of
these strange drawings:
"The Nightmare''.
"The Triumph of the Antichrist''.
"The Centaur-elephant''.
A huge (450 pages) exhibit catalogue is available:
E.g., at Amazon under "Georges Focus. La Folie d'un Peintre de Louis XIV".
If you understand French, there is this
video.