Elizabeth Sonrel was the daughter of the painter
from Tours, Stephane Sonrel, from whom she received her early
artistic guidance. To further her artistic studies she moved on
to Paris where she became the pupil of the famous artist Jules
Lefebvre at his Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Tours museum owns her
diploma work, Pax et Labor, which was executed in 1892
at the age of 18 and shows how tremendously precocious she was.
She showed at the Salon des Artistes français
in Paris from 1893 to 1941, especially large watercolors of idealized
women that have both a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity (since
a journey in Italy, to Florence and Rome where she discovered
the Renaissance painters, she deeply admired Botticelli) and an
affinity to French symbolist painting. She was inspired by Arthurian
romance, biblical subjects, archaic legends and medieval love.
Some of her mystical works include Ames errantes (Salon
of 1894) and Les Esprits de l’abime
(Salon of 1899) and Jeune femme a la tapisserie which has
an inspiration close to the famous symbolist Maxence. She did
not however adhere to the symbolist movement that, besides, totally
ignored her.
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