Les sources iconographiques des portraits fictifs du père jésuite Jacques Marquette

Les sources iconographiques
des portraits fictifs du père jésuite Jacques Marquette

1913-1924 Francis Schroen

« Gasson Hall 1913. Named in honor of Rev. Thomas I. Gasson, SJ, president of Boston College from 1907 to 1914 and founder of the Chestnut Hill campus. Gasson Hall is located in the center of the Middle Campus across from the Admission Office in Devlin Hall. The rotunda on the first floor, surrounded by murals of notable Jesuits, contains a white marble statue of the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer. » Source.

Google Maps.

« Marquette recludit ignotos flumnis Mississippi fontes / Marquette révélant les eaux inconnues du Mississippi. Gasson's Rotunda Gallery of Art, History and Religion du Boston College. » Source : Béland 2006.

Photo : source.

Détail avec perspective rétablie
d'après la photo ci-dessous : source.

« A view of the Rotunda, with the Carrara marble statue of the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer. Four alcoves frame sculptures of Jesuit saints, including John Berchmans (left) and Stanislaus Kostka. Murals above depict notable Jesuits, among them Jacques Marquette entering the Mississippi River (left) and the 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher. » Source.

Marquette, debout sur le devant du canot central à l'avant-plan, auréolé par les nuages à l'horizon, chevelu et barbu, tient la croix de sa main gauche, la droite pendante. Un blanc et deux Amérindiens avironnent derrière lui.

Jolliet occupe la position similaire dans le canot secondaire où avironnent trois blancs.

Difficile de juger des couleurs réelles de cette oeuvre très différentes d'une photo à l'autre !

L'oeuvre a été peintre entre 1913 et 1924 par le jésuite Francis C. Schroen (1857–1924) selon les informations ci-dessous.

Détail avec perspective rétablie d'après cette photo : source.

Extract of section titled « 7. Possessed » from : Cara Cannella '01, photography by Gary Wayne Gilbert, « Gasson Confidential, On its an idiosyncratic tour of a few of the Tower Building's treasures and untold stories », Boston College Magazine, Fall 2002. Source.

Br. Francis Schroen (pictured at work), the tormented and self-taught Jesuit artist who left his handiwork on nearly every important public surface in Gasson Hall, was born in 1857 in Germany and brought to the United States as an infant. Raised in Maryland, Schroen worked as a housepainter and wall decorator. After he lost his young wife to disease, he abandoned their daughter and turned to Ouija boards and automatic writing as a way to communicate with the beyond. Believing that Satan was sending him messages and was trying to throw him off his scaffold, Schroen one day sought refuge in a church. In a sense, he never emerged, and in later years referred to himself as "a brand snatched from the burning." At age 41, he was accepted as a Jesuit lay-brother, and he soon made a reputation for the interior decoration of buildings at Georgetown and Fordham.

When he arrived at BC in 1913 at Fr. Gasson's invitation to "garnish" the just-dry plaster of Gasson Hall, Schroen was greeted as a celebrity whose "warm artistry," noted the student magazine The Stylus, would show to good effect "under the softened light shed through the stained glass windows" that were planned for Gasson 100.

Schroen's work over the next years included the murals in the Gasson rotunda, in the Fulton Debating Room (Gasson 305), and in a large conference room now used by the Arts & Sciences dean. But his most ambitious work was The Church, the Educator of Mankind (accompanying photo), which looms over the stage of Gasson 100. At 27 by 12 feet, the painting depicts the apostle Peter on a throne flanked on each side by robed triads of eminences who exemplify "the 16 profane and sacred arts." Among the exemplars are Moses (the only non-Catholic on the wall), who is joined by "King Edward" and "Lord Russell" under the category of Law; Columbus, who is categorized with Marquette and Cabot under Exploration; and Daniel O'Connell and John Carroll, who are listed as practitioners of Patriotism along with Sobieski (Jan, the 17th-century Polish king, and not Leelee, the contemporary starlet). In the left background of the painting, the silhouette of BC's Gasson Hall is on the horizon in the company of the cathedrals of Rheims, Canterbury, and Notre Dame. And that doesn't begin to exhaust the detail of waterways, sheep, lambs, candlesticks, trees, heavenly lights, seals, and temples that make the work a thick—if somber—stew of allegory.

Schroen went on to do work in New Orleans, Chicago, and Kingston, Jamaica. He died in 1925 [1924 according to sources below] at Georgetown. No muralist touched a Boston College wall again until the 1990s.

According to Wikipedia and other sources, Schroen died in 1924 :

« Brother Francis C. Schroen, S.J. (1857- 1924) - Born in Bavaria, Francis C. Schroen, S.J., was brought to Baltimore by his parents as an infant. His father was a tailor and wished Francis to enter the same field. However, after Francis left school, he worked as a house painter, earning a reputation as a skilled decorator who specialized in the use of plastics. After a series of tragedies – the death of two of his children and then of his wife in childbirth – and financial setbacks, he applied for admission as a Jesuit lay-brother. Continuing his decorating work as a member of the Jesuit order, he became one of the most noted church decorators and painters of his time. His talents were utilized at Georgetown, Fordham, and Boston College, in the Cathedral of Kingston, Jamaica, and in the Church of the Holy Name in New Orleans, among other places. Brother Schroen is buried in the Jesuit Community Cemetery on campus [of Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia]. » Source.