Max Jacob (Quimper, 1876 - Drancy internment camp, 1944) is best known as a poet and writer, but he was also a painter, and his name is closely tied to Cubism and the Parisian avant-garde. Born in Brittany into a Jewish family that did not practise its faith, he settled in Paris at the start of the twentieth century, where he worked as an art critic and moved in the bohemian circles of Montmartre. His early years in the capital were marked by poverty, with occasional jobs and long evenings in cafés and taverns.
His friendship with Pablo Picasso was decisive. They met in Paris in 1901, and Jacob helped the young Spanish painter learn French and find his way in the city's art world. Later they shared a room on the Boulevard Voltaire, taking turns to sleep. Picasso made four copper engravings for the novel Saint Matorel (1911), often cited as the first Cubist book. Years later Picasso painted Jacob as the monk in Three Musicians (1921). Jacob also counted Apollinaire, Braque, Matisse and Modigliani among his friends, and Modigliani painted his portrait in 1916.
As a painter, Jacob focused mainly on Breton subjects, with scenes of churches, calvaries and markets from his native region, such as The Pardon of Sainte-Anne or The Calvary at Guengat. His paintings were shown in New York in 1930 and 1938. After a vision he is said to have had in 1909, he converted to Catholicism, a step he took amid inner conflict over his homosexuality. His legacy is more literary than pictorial: he is regarded as a link between Symbolism and Surrealism, especially through his prose poems The Dice Box (1917). He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and died at Drancy that March, shortly before he was due to be deported to Auschwitz.
Works (1)
Where to see the work
- Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans Orléans · 1
Curiosities
A name with an echo
Jacob signed his first art criticism with the name of his maternal grandfather, Léon David, and also used the pseudonym Morven le Gaëlique. Years later, the Resistance leader Jean Moulin took the code name Max, which is presumed to have been chosen in honour of Jacob, with whom he had been friends.
A monk in a Cubist painting
Picasso depicted Jacob as the monk in Three Musicians, painted in 1921 in a synthetic Cubist style. The dark-robed figure on the right is usually identified with him. The choice is telling, since Jacob had moved between religious poetry and bohemian life, and the image reflects that tension between devotion and worldly existence.