Armand Point

Music: Music composed and performed by Brandon Fiechter Celtic Medieval Music: “Medieval Faire” and “Cobblestone Village” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLLnIcQll56hJ89dDin4UcA Thank you for your music, dear Brandon! ::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Armand Point (Alger, 1860 - Naples, 1932) Armand Point was born in 1860 in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. As he grew up, he would have been surrounded by a rich and varied culture – the architecture, landscape, beliefs and customs of the Arab world - in the largest port on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. At this time Algeria was a French colony, with trade routes across the world. Originally from Burgundy in France, his family was not rich. His father, a plasterer, died during the cholera epidemic which swept Algiers in 1867, and his mother, a milliner, died in 1868 during a typhoid epidemic. Aged 7, the orphaned Armand went to live with his aunt. In 1870, aged 9, he was sent to the Collège Rollin in Paris where he showed a great talent for drawing, encouraged by his art teacher Auguste Herst, who was quite a well-known artist at that time. He won a certificate of merit in a drawing competition in 1877, and this confirmed his wish to become a painter. The following year, aged 17 and homesick, he left Paris and returned to Algeria. He became the pupil and friend of a french artist, Hippolyte Lazerges (1817-1887) who painted frequently in Algeria. Armand painted scenes of local street life and domestic interiors. There were no regular opportunities to exhibit paintings in Algiers and so Armand and his friends showed their latest work in the windows of photographers’ studios in the city before sending them to exhibitions in Paris. The first painting that he sent to the prestigious Paris Salon in 1882 was bought by the State, which was a great success for a 21 year old artist. In Paris and other European cities at that time, there was a great interest in the work of 'Orientalist' painters, meaning European artists who were inspired by North Africa and the Near East. These artists produced paintings of harems, baths, deserts, and markets, which fed Europe’s fascination with the 'mysterious' Orient. They recorded unfamiliar details of local life, people and architecture. Artists were also entranced by the bright, intense light effects of the region and the vivid colours so different from those of a cooler Northern climate. Armand Point, who was always interested in the medievalism, followed the orientalist line, not only because of his origin and masters, but for the close relations between oriental mysticism and the Templars. Just this interest in the Templars brought Armand Point to implicate himself with the Rosicrucians and le Sar Peladan. Armand Point married for the first time in 1885 to Helene Linder, a woman whose grace was coupled with the highest distinction of heart and mind, according to some of Armand’s biographers. Around 1889, he moved to Paris, setting his home at Marlotte, near Fontainebleau. He baptized his dwelling and workshop as Haute Claire (after the sword of Olivier, a character in the French epic "The Song of Roland") and transformed it in a center of attraction for artists and intellectuals, mainly related to the symbolist movement. After this move, his style altered dramatically. He was inspired by the English Pre-Raphaelite painters and the works of William Morris, and he developed a strong interest in the Symbolist Movement, which rejected realistic art, and aimed to revive the 'ideal art' of the Italian Old Masters, Botticelli and Leonardo. He formed a group of artists and craft makers and set up a workshop where you could often find such people as Odilon Redon, Oscar Wilde, Élémir Bourges, Stéphane Mallarmé ou Stuart Merrill in an atmosphere sometimes referred to as “la cour d’amour”. In december 1901 he got married to Helga, a danish young woman widow of Sigbjørn Obstfelder, an escandinavian poet. In june 1902 they had a son, Victor-Elemir, but the mental instability of Helga finally drew the couple to a divorce in December 1908, and the wife to death in an asylum in 1930. Unappreciated by the critics, Armand Point maintained an interest for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance similar to his admired Burne-Jones and William Morris to the day of his death, in 1932, few months before his son’s suicide.