Louis Beysson (1856 - 1912) Locomotive At The Station Lyon-mouche

Oil on canvas. 43 x 55 cm. Signed lower right.

This oil on canvas by Louis Beysson, entitled Locomotive en Gare - Lyon-Mouche, captures the nocturnal, industrial atmosphere of Lyon's La Mouche depot. The scene takes place at night, when the artificial lights become supernatural fires.
The massive, frontal locomotive emerges from the dark background of the canvas like a panting monster of steel, hurling columns of smoke and flame as it conquers modernity. Its two headlights evoke the “big, round, blazing eyes” that pierce the darkness, illuminating the wet rails that reflect the light in a luminous double, reinforcing the impression of power and contained speed. Here, the painter seeks neither anecdote nor precise depiction of the station's passengers. True to his remark that he “neglected passengers and staff”, he focuses all his attention on the steam engine. It is not a mere object, but a subject in its own right, alive and well, almost endowed with an interiority. The building on the right, bathed in dark orange hues, seems to vibrate with the nocturnal hustle and bustle of departures and arrivals: shadows dance, lights bleed, and you can almost hear “trains whistling, bells ringing, rolling with a deafening noise”.
Louis Antoine Beysson was born into a middle-class family in Lyon, where his father was a silk merchant. yn-MoLo Here, the painter seeks neither anecd He studied at the Lycée Impérial in Lyon, then with the Jesuits at the Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg, before enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. After completing his training, Louis Beysson moved to Paris, where he abandoned painting for literature.
On his return to Lyon, he pursued both the arts and literature, and took up journalism when the director of the Salut Public, M. Pérut, hired him as a war correspondent to follow the 1881 campaign in Tunisia.

Once the war was over, he settled permanently in Lyon, where he worked in turn as a painter, journalist, novelist, poet, author and playwright. With the support of humanist Aimé Vingtrinier, Beysson published Geri ou un premier amour, the first French novel to deal openly with homosexuality. His play Mousseline triumphed at the Théâtre des Célestins in 1884, leading to the republication of Geri.

He also published Le fils du Christ (1885) and edited Les Annales lyonnaises illustrées. In the heart of Lyon's Rue Ferrandière, he inaugurated his own painting studio, a veritable creative showcase. Seduced by the railway epic, he sublimated majestic stations and steel locomotives on his canvases, an audacious approach that quickly earned him an enviable reputation. It is said of him that “he knew how to see locomotives as a sailor sees his ship, a beautiful ship.” "Louis Beysson belonged to the strong realist school in Lyon that produced the Carrand, Ravier and Trévoux. He was truly an artist, with all that this word implies in terms of naive ingenuity and insouciance, but also .true sensitivity." Le Salut Public