An artistic family and a public career
Girardet was born in 1856 into a family with roots in Le Locle, Switzerland. His father Paul was an engraver; his brothers Eugène and Théodore also pursued artistic careers. Jules studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Alexandre Cabanel. Visits to North Africa with Eugène exposed him to the subjects his brother favoured, but Jules developed his own practice in history painting and portraiture.
He exhibited paintings, pastels and watercolours in France and Switzerland. A medal at the Paris Salon in 1881 and a silver medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle marked his growing reputation. His decorative panel of the defence of the bridge at Thielle was given to Neuchâtel for the republic’s fiftieth anniversary in 1898. His subjects also included episodes of the Paris Commune; Paris Musées records a reproduction of his depiction of Louise Michel’s arrest. He continued exhibiting into the 1930s and died in 1938.
A painter’s contribution to Balzac in English
The held Little, Brown Centenary Edition brings Séraphîta together with The Alkahest as volume XXX of Balzac’s works. Its title credits Wormeley as translator and Girardet as illustrator. The opening plate carries a scene captioned She drew the flower from her bosom and showed it to them. It gives a visible narrative moment to a novel whose larger concerns include mystical love and spiritual transformation.
In the plate, two men sit at a table with books and a lamp while a young woman stands beside them; a small flower draws one man’s attention. The quiet interior gives the novel’s mystical themes a setting in gesture, faces and familiar objects. Girardet’s picture, Parsons’s philosophical introduction and Wormeley’s translation bring different forms of interpretation to the same fiction.
