Jules Péaron (1836-1882) "Paysage saturnien"

Jules Péaron (1836-1882) "Paysage saturnien", 1872, charcoal and chalk 57 x 42 cm, signed and annotated "Péaron et le hasard", dated 1872.

                                                   Jules Péaron started out as a rural postman, then obtained a grant from his home town to study drawing. In Paris, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying with L.Cogniet and J.Quentin. In 1867, he exhibited "Le Labour" inspired by the novels of Georges Sand at the Salon. He was a contributor to many illustrated newspapers and wrote a treatise on drawing. J. du Pontaulais devoted several pages to him in his Choses diverses sur le Pays de la Châtre. Victor Hugo appreciated the talent of this strange and visionary character. 
Péaron became friends with Verlaine, who was interested in his curious method of "chance"  .

In 1867, Péaron produced a Portrait-charge of Verlaine inspired by the Poèmes saturniens, in which the poet is depicted full-frontal, with his hair blowing in the wind, but with a skeletal body; he is standing on the skeleton of a galloping horse. The scene takes place in an arena, under a starry night - the light coming not from the Moon, but from Saturn.
He painted another portrait of the poet in 1869. Péaron, an unrepentant bohemian, died at the age of 46.
This strange and rare work by Péaron clearly echoes the melancholy and solitude of Verlaine's Saturnian poems published in 1866. Here Péaron uses his method of "chance" (which could be likened to automatic writing), the same chance to which Verlaine refers at the end of the prologue to the Saturnian poems: "Now go, my Book, where chance leads you!