 Contributed by Dana Kress, Ph.D.Associate Professor of French, Centenary College of Louisiana
With Editing and Web Design by Elizabeth M. Weilbacher |
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The Great War drew individuals from all walks of life into its inescapable vortex, sometimes snatching them from their most victorious moments only to plunge them into the inescapable hell of the trenches.
Such was the case for Jean Despujols, a young Bordelais artist who, on July 18, 1914, was crowned with France's most coveted artistic award, the Prix de Rome. Germany declared war on France scarcely a week later, just as he was leaving to continue his studies in Rome; he was mobilized on August 2 and served for four years as a machine-gunner in the trenches. Ironically, Despujols' prize-winning canvas was a depiction of The Passion of the Virgin in which he used himself as a model for the crucified Christ. Today his work seems strangely prophetic, foretelling France's lamentation over her wasted youth. His poem "Vain Recriminations," written in the second line of Paissy in June of 1915, eerily presages the Second World War. He received orders to join his unit, as quickly as possible. He left without a word, without a goodbye, secretly afraid he might do something cowardly. On August 13 he was in Paris, on the 14th he arrived in Pau; his regiment (the 218th) had left the week before and no one knew its destination. By accident Despujols crossed paths with them at Toul on the 18th. This French soldier-painter fought in some of the most devastating battles of the war: Verdun, the Chemin des Dames, the Belgian campaign, the Craonne and the battle of the Marne. |
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Everywhere he went he continued to work, documenting daily life and death in the trenches, writing in his journal and making sketches of the carnage around him.
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Because of the miserable conditions in the trenches and because of a critical lack of paper, Despujols drew many of his war scenes on the backs of letters and scraps of paper which he later incorporated into his World War I sketchbook. The sketches serve as illustrations for the journal which Despujols later entitled L'Homme Qui se Bat, (Man in Struggle). Filled with pathos and nobility of spirit, his sketchbook and journal testify to his belief that artistic endeavor enables humanity to triumph over its tragedies.
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His drawings, technically known as croquis, were not conceived in the tranquillity of a studio. They are visions captured in a matter of seconds during bombardments, gas attacks, and sniper fire. Through them, Despujols defied his own mortality while he immortalized his buddies who, in death, served as his models.
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His sketchbook, with a total of 136 surviving images, is divided into nine parts. The "Landscapes" section, composed of drawings Despujols made when reconnoitering enemy positions, illustrates one way the army obtained valuable information obtained about "the lay of the land." The importance of such intelligence missions clearly outweighed any personal danger. The deceptive title suggests a collection of scenes of idyllic tranquility in the classical tradition. Death, however, lurks beneath the seemingly peaceful surface of Despujols' images in the form of hidden machine gun nests and snipers waiting for a kill. Despujols devoted a major section of his sketchbook to the suffering of women at war. Many of the women he knew endured what they knew to be temporary relationships with men doomed to never return. For Despujols these heroic women snatched moments of love and human warmth from a war that denied any enduring happiness. His portrait, Adieu à Margo, depicts a woman he met on his way to the deadman's land of Verdun. Margo questions the heavens with her eyes; she knows all too well that this soldier's soul, like all the others, belongs not to her, but à Dieu -- to God.
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| The following excerpts from Despujols' journal represent only one week of his experiences. Yet this was a significant moment in the war and Despujols' remarks tell a personal story of suffering during Nivelle's disastrous assault along the Chemin des Dames. On April 14th, 1917, his regiment crossed the Vesle beneath a dark and threatening sky. The men shivered, soaked by a fine, freezing, penetrating rain. They waited for the soup wagon that didn't come; it was blocked in at the rear of the unending convoy. They headed north on empty stomachs. It took five hours to cover the ten kilometers to Maizy. It was a hellish march of despair where darkness seemed to enshroud them like funerary robes. It rained harder and harder and, one by one, the wheels of their mule-drawn carts sank into the too-late perceived depths of water-filled bomb craters. Their misery foreshadowed April 16, the day of the attack on the Chemin des Dames. It was a catastrophe that led the French army to the brink of wholesale desertion. Most of the troops, like Despujols, had survived Verdun. Now they were led to an even speedier and more certain slaughter. Strategists believed this would be the beginning of the end for Germany; their visions of victory were not to be. Heavy losses caused the French to withdraw immediately, but not to give up; the attack was relaunched over the coming days with no better results. The men suffered terribly. When it was all over, few hundred yards of scorched earth cost the lives of 250,000 men.
 The Boche Lob Melanite Bombs, May 1, 1917. May 2  Landscape, May 6, 1917. May 6th  Dupuy the Stretcher Carrier
Cardouat, my dear, faithful Cardouat. He lays face up, legs arched. He seems to have waved his arms like a baby in arms. But his face is calm, absolutely calm. Death neither surprised him, nor terrified him, nor delighted him, nor saddened him. "This time, that's it. A moment in time, that's all." That's what his lips, stretched from left to right like a hyphen, told me. Poor Cardouat!  Carnage on the Railroad, May 7, 1917 Another lugubrious discovery. Simonnet. Sergeant Simonnet from the 3rd section and a member of our field mess. He lies there, saying nothing, stiff, already belonging to the earth. He is the first of our group not present for roll call. |
| Despujols went to the relief camp, arriving about three in the morning. The march had been very painful, thinking about his lost men as he jumped from hole to hole carrying the heavy weaponry and stumbling along the wooden planking lining the bottoms of the trenches. At the post at Monmirail, Moureu, the communications expert, shook their hands as if they had been saved by divine providence. To make it worse, when the offensive was halted by the fields of impassable barbed wire and the troops fell back to Maizy, muddy, drenched and exhausted, the army wavered. It was subdued by planting larger fields of wooden crosses. In spite of all this, to Despujols, "life, no matter how ignoble and precarious, had become magnificently beautiful." He had learned that sleeping on straw, going to mess with his friends, or sitting in the woods were moments to be savored, to delight in, just because he was still alive. When his men began to sing and celebrate the joy that welled up within them, a young priest chewed them out, reminding them of their buddies who had been lost the day before. For Despujols, though, surviving the slaughter of Chemin des Dames was a happiness that bore no shame. His joy was such that it seemed the dead were no longer dead; they had never even existed.
 Despujols with colleagues of the 218th The soldiers were disbanded and abandoned to a civilian life with which they were ill-equipped to cope. Disarmed in every sense, impotent and isolated, they returned like paupers to ruined and destroyed homes. Despujols was one of the lucky few; he had never been wounded (at least not visibly). He had never even caught a cold or missed a day of action. He received 6 citations, the Médaille Militaire, and the Légion d'Honneur. He had given up his leave to others, and had taken his six days after 18 months on the front. He hadn't seen his father in 5 years. To him, the millions who had perished might be considered fortunate. At least they did not have to try to rebuild shattered dreams and devastated lives: "Happy is the soldier with two feet in the tomb. Am I too not dead in my heart and in my soul? I cast the uniform that I have worn for 7 years into the nettles."In 1920 the artist put away his sketchbook and journal, turning his back on the war and trying to erase his painful memories. For 80 years the public has remained unaware of their existence. Jean Despujols went on to live a varied and prolific life. After collecting his long-overdue prize in Rome, he returned to France where he taught, played a major role in the Art Deco movement, and was a political activist. In 1936 he was awarded the Prix de L'Indochine, a distinction which funded several years' travel in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. While abroad, Despujols created the largest single collection of French colonial painting by a professional artist, now housed at the Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College in Louisiana. He returned to France in 1939, leaving it once and for all in fleeing the Nazi advance to travel in America. He settled in Shreveport in 1941, where he worked as a portraitist until his death in 1965.
Dana Kress is an authority on the subject of Jean Despujols; he was the person who discovered the existence of the sketches and diary manuscripts that are excerpted here. His biography of the artist, a detailed exploration of Despujols' rich life and work, is forthcoming.
All images which appear on these pages are copyrighted, and have been used with permission of the Estate of Jean Despujols. Original website artwork & copy; © 1998-2000, The
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