PAÏNI Lotus de (EN)

Biographical Article

A few rare biographical essays (Le Gouard M., 2002 and 2008, Andrei E., 2019) provide information on the life of Elvezia Gazzotti, who was better known by her artist and pen name, Lotus de Païni, first in the last decade of the 19th century, then from the 1920s until her death. It was under this name that her esoteric work became known in traditionalist and surrealist circles (Le Gouard M., 2007), in particular André Breton who lent his name to one of her collages in 1962 (Andrei E ., 2019, p. 162).

Daughter of an Italian father born in Switzerland, Giuseppe Gazzotti, and a French mother, Thérèse Guignon, Elvezia was born in Copparo, near Ferrara. She spent most of her youth on the Côte d'Azur, in the region of her mother's family, near Vallauris.

"Lotus (Mme la Baronne Paini, née Lotus Gazzotti, dite)" is recorded as a painter in the Dictionnaire national des contemporains in 1899 (Curinier, C.-L., 1899, p. 278): "Very young still, she studied painting without masters and trained herself. She sent a first painting, entitled: Théodora, to the Salon of 1888. Her marriage [with Nicolas Païni] interrupted her artistic work for some time. She resumed it from 1894, in Bucharest [where her sister lived under the name of "Madame Mars"], where she then was and where she produced a series of remarkable portraits, in particular that of Reine Élisabeth (Carmen Sylva), which brought her talent to light [Some of these works are now kept at the Museum of Art Collections in Bucharest, Elena and Anasase Simu Collection, see Andrei E., 2019]. In 1897, Madame la Baroness Païni came to settle in Paris; she exhibited there, at the Salon de la Société des Beaux-Arts, under the signature "Lotus", the following works, which immediately attracted attention: Portrait de Mme la Comtesse Tornielli, Ambassador of Italy (1897); Les Indiscrètes (1898); La Vie [regardant passer la jeunesse], a large symbolic painting, announced as the first of a series inspired by philosophical thought (1899). Madame la Baroness has been an officer of the Academy since 1898." Such is the description of the geographical and artistic trajectories of "Lotus" before 1899, the year in which she divorced Nicolas Païni and met Paul Pératé (1869-19...), assistant surgeon at the hospital in Péau (?), whom she married on January 25, 1900. In 1903, the couple had their surname changed to "Péralté" (Le Gouard M., 2002, p. 218). From at least 1901, they were both members of the Theosophical Society (Le Gouard M., 2002, p. 218). Lotus seems to have harboured an early interest in the occult and the "philosophical" turn in her painting is an expression of this.

The couple's interests in theosophy coupled with Paul's medical skills motivated his request for a (pro bono) mission "to the British Indies" with the Ministry of Public Instruction (AN, F/17/17282). As scientific proof of his request, Paul Péralté invoked his "research in philosophy and science relating to the history of comparative religions and to psycho-physiology" (September 29, 1904, and again in the last letter in the Madras file, November 16, 1904), indicating hence a marked interest in ascetic practices and in particular for yoga. His request was supported by Jules Siegfried (1837-1922), deputy of Le Havre, who had made his fortune in the cotton trade after establishing a branch in Bombay in 1862. On September 28, 1904, Siegfried wrote from Péralté: “He is an intelligent man, who will represent France with honour and I am convinced that he will be able to bring back from his journey, which will last from one to two years, the most useful works.” Little is known of the mission’s scientific outcome, but the collection of Asian art objects and Lotus’s paintings were recognised by an exhibition at the Musée Guimet some time after their return.

It was during this same period that Lotus became involved in theosophical circles, notably in the International Committee for Research into Mystical Traditions, founded by Annie Besant (1847-1933) in 1907 and directed by Harriet Isabel Cooper-Oakley (1854-1914), born in India and with whom Lotus had conceived the abandoned project of launching a journal for the committee (Le Gouard M., 2002, p. 221). The friendship between Lotus Péralté and Isabel Cooper-Oakley, then living in Milan, not only reflects the international networks within the Theosophical Society, but also the dynamics in France between esoteric circles and Christian modernists. Thus there was a correspondence with Father Albert Houtin (1867-1926), who along with Father Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was an important figure in the "modernist crisis" within the Catholic Church and defended a rationalist approach to religion. The submissions of Lotus Péralté are notes of little significance, but by the letters of Isabel Cooper-Oakley, we know that she was the one who had introduced Lotus Péralte to him. Cooper-Oakley wished to invite Houtin to Milan to give a lecture on the position of the Church in France. Their correspondence deals with the subject of the modernism movement; she evokes for example the opposition that Loisy makes between "Christ the Lord" and "Jesus of Nazareth" in Autour d'un petit livre (1903) and refers Houtin on this subject to the Hindu point of view described by Annie Besant in her book Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries (1902). Cooper-Oakley also kept Houtin informed of the activities of the Theosophical Society in Paris and sent him books by G.R.S. Mead (1863-1933), as well as an order form for his own book Mystical Traditions (1909) prefaced by Annie Besant.

Lotus de Païni thus experienced an important phase in her life, clearly fascinated by India and Tibet through her theosophical affinities, which led her to revise her philosophical and aesthetic anthropology: "Is not all human history made up of the diverse orientations of that mysterious faculty of thinking and abstracting which is proper to man? does not the harmonious and virile hellenic civilisation involve a desired effort of thought towards an ideal of strength and beauty? What profound and marvellous conceptions have been left to us in the field of philosophy by the Indo-Aryan genius? Since then, what new has been found in the field of abstraction? It is over two thousand years since Buddha brought the higher principle of the Universal Solidarity of Beings, so we cannot claim priority of this notion. Too far from us are the still more archaic civilisations for our ultra-modern form of intellect to claim to understand their scope; these civilisations also had to orient their thinking towards an ideal and seek to decipher one of the hieroglyphs of enigmatic Nature.” (Païni L., 1909, p. 16-17).

On the strength of these anthropological reflections that could be called "fundamental", Lotus de Païni quickly developed a syncretist way of thinking about the "science of the spirit" which evolves towards Christian esotericism. Her first publications also explicitly underline this inflection (Païni L., 1914a and b, 1924) and fall under the aegis of the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). A review of her book Les Premières Phases d’un mouvement de l’esprit makes the following summary: "M. [sic] Lotus Péralté traces for us the history of the theosophical movement […], the oriental origins of esotericism and the kinship which connects the teaching of Mme Blavatsky and Annie Besant to the doctrines of India. Then he [sic] tells us (and this is the newest and most exciting part of his book) the unexpected aspect that theosophy takes in Germany with Doctor Steiner […] who had the idea of ​​explaining the doctrine of Jesus through the occult and to base all theosophy no longer on India, but on Christianity.” (Intérim, "Le mouvement littéraire", Le Matin, January 21, 1914, p. 6) In Dornach, where Lotus spent the years 1914 to 1919, she contributed to the project led by Steiner for the first Goetheanum, with a gigantic fresco in the Great Cupola titled "The Initiate of Ancient India".

After the War, Lotus resumed long-distance travel. Although her only travelogue was written at this time (Païni L., 1930), these expeditions to the "Orient" and Central America, in search of pre-Columbian and aboriginal traces, directly nourished her work (Le Gouard M., 2003) through a number of examples brought to the concepts that she develops in the form of neologisms reminiscent of the lexicon of fin de siècle esotericism and intended to account for a primordial religious or magical thought, for the "great psycho-physiological human power" (Païni L., 1932, p. 1): "cosmicity", "femininity", "aitheric", "totemisation" (Le Gouard M., 2008, p. 213). At the end of her literary production, appreciated by the Surrealists and various writers such as Henry Miller (1891-1980) (Le Gouard M., 2008, p. 218), criticised by René Guénon (1886-1951) for her confusion of the “psychic" with the "spiritual" and for "the strange exaggeration given to the role of the body" (Le Gouard M., 2008, p. 214), Lotus de Païni returns through her readings of Alexandra David-Neel (1868 -1969), with whom she had been in contact since at least 1932 and whom she met in person at Samten Dzong (Digne-les-Bains) on 5 March 1934 (MADN Archives, Agendas 1932 and 1934; see also Le Gouard M., 2002, p. 221), with Tibetan horizons glimpsed thirty years earlier, giving Tibetan Buddhism as the ultimate way out of "Western mysticism", which provides the model of the ultimate stage of her Mysticisme intégral (Païni L., 1934). Her last publications are articles written while living with her niece near Puy-l'Évêque, as she had been since the end of the Second World War. Published in 1952 and 1953, just before her death, in the review Le Goëland by Théophile Briant (1851-1956), they deal with "levitation", the "antiquity of human thought”, and "Asian thought. The last issue of the journal from 1953 includes a "Hommage à Lotus de Païni" by Théophile Briant (Le Gouard M., 2008, p. 216-217): "She wanted to be mysterious, and evaded investigations" (Le Gouard M., 2003, p. 11). However, alongside a few archival documents, her publications and some of her works reappeared, including the fourteen Stations of the Way of the Cross created in 1936 for the sacristy of the Collegiate Church of Auffay (Seine-Maritime), hidden in 1939 and found and restored in 2016 (Andrei E., 2019, p. 161-162).

The Collection

The only known material vestige of the Asian art of Lotus and Paul Péralté, the Péralté collection was formed during the trip to India and Ladakh in 1904. It is divided between a series of 24 paintings painted by Lotus de Péralté and about 40 objects. By presenting to the public objects rarely seen in France, the collection considerably enriched the temporary exhibition at the Musée Guimet inaugurated on May 27, 1908 (Milloué L., 1908). The exhibition is a landmark in the history of French museography by bringing together, alongside the Asian collections of the missions of Étienne Aymonier (1844-1929) (Cambodia) and Édouard Chavannes (1865-1918) (China), 'a set of netzké from the Wasset collection and Japanese kakemonos donated by Robert Lebaudy (1859-1961), as well as funerary portraits of Antinoë brought back by Albert Gayet (1856-1916), the first major collections in France from Tibetan regions (Thévoz S., 2020). The press hailed "a series of religious or historical objects collected in India and Tibet by Mr. and Mrs. Péralté (about 20 paintings, by Mrs. Péralté, represent the most interesting sites or monuments visited by the travellers and evoking for the visitor the original environment of these objects); finally, a very curious collection of 210 pieces also brought from Tibet by M. Bacot, many of which relate to the primitive religion of this country” (Marguillier A., ​​1908, p. 153).

The museum's assistant curator, Joseph Hackin (1886-1941), presented the collection of Lotus Péralté's "Vues de l’Inde, Ceylan, Tibet" as follows: "The paintings of Mme Péralte offer great artistic and documentary interest; executed on the spot, they fix with precision what photography cannot render: the impression and the colour, these two essential factors which constitute the charm and the originality of the Eastern countries. Other sketches present the disconcerting and grandiose landscapes of the Himalayas and Tibet, new and sincere glimpses of a mysterious land.” The paintings document the places seen on her trip, via landscapes and a portrait (MG 14421): Pointe de Galle, Madras (Lotus at the same time painted a portrait of Annie Besant in Adyar, Andrei E., 2019, p. 157), Benares (Varanasi; in particular, the ghāṭ are described in detail by Paul Péralté in his writeup), Śatruñjaya, Amber, Srinagar. Leh, Himis, Lamayuru, Bodh Gaya, Puri, and Bhubaneshwar. The Tibetan monasteries and chörten (mchod rten) (notably MG 14423a and MG 14424a), represented in the gigantic mountain setting of Ladakh, form the major element of the whole. Paul Péralté notably describes the dances of the monks of Lamayuru, famous in particular for having been evoked before him by Nicolas Notovitch (1858-19...).

While Paul Péralté wrote the descriptions for his wife's collection, Joseph Hackin made the appraisals, with the help of Adjroup Gumbo (18...-1911), a Tibetan scholar who had accompanied the explorer Jacques Bacot (1878-1965), of the Tibetan collections and wrote the relevant sections of the catalogue: "Inde, Tibet, Japon : Collection Péralté" (Milloué L., 1908, p. 22-35) and “Tibet : Collections bon-po et bouddhique rapportées du Tibet par M. Bacot” (pp. 35-71). The objects in the Péralté collection are essentially contemporary in style. The collection is made up of about 20 objects from India (mainly statuettes of Kṛṣṇa and some Gaṇeśa), about ten Tibetan cult objects and statuettes of Japanese deities, and some Indo-Persian miniatures; a thangka and masks from Sri Lanka and Tibet complete the collection. Some 20 years after her journey, Lotus Péralté recalled: “The lamas cover their heads with masks in the mysterious dances of spring; and these very remarkable masks are kept in a large hall of their lamasserie with the shimmering costumes that complement them. They are strange objects among the even more bizarre things of these disturbing red wizards, whose emanation is difficult to define. In the country of Ladakh, the great lamasery of Hemis, which I was allowed to enter in 1904, possesses very fine ones.” (Païni L., 1924, p. 155).

Particularly noteworthy in the collection deposited at the Musée Guimet are a collection of illuminated stotra in Sanskrit (çarada script) containing 37 paintings (MG 2554), the three superimposed heads having surmounted a statue of Avalokiteśvara in the Sino-Tibetan style (MG 14462), described in Hackin J., 1923, p. 91 and reproduced in Couchoud P.-L., 1928, p. 137, and a Japanese statuette of a Shō-Kannon Bosatsu (Aryāvalokiteśvara) in gilded and lacquered wood enhanced with copper elements and semi-precious stones (MG 14463) reproduced in Franck B., 1991, p. 109.

In his letter to Émile Guimet (1836-1918) of April 19, 1908, Paul Péralté confirms the donation of the paintings by his wife and the "miscellaneous objects" attached to his own name. Thus under the name of Paul Péralté are recorded in the museum three entries constituting a set larger than the lot exhibited in 1908: MG 2554-25555, MG 2567 and MG 14404-14471. Under the name of Lotus Péralté is recorded a donation dated June 17, 1911 of 14 new paintings (MG 15853-15867), from her trip to Egypt (Le Gouard M., 2002, p. 221). A few paintings exhibited in 1908 no doubt remained in the artist's personal collection, or were sold by her, of which, in either eventuality, we have no trace (see, about the rediscovered works of Lotus de Païni, Andrei E., 2019). Nos. 15855, 15857 and 15859 were deposited at the Musée Guimet in Lyon in 1923 (today at the Musée des Confluences). It was for the donation of 1908 that the Minister of Public Instruction, Charles Bayet (1849-1918), notified Guimet on January 25, 1909 that, at the request of the latter, he was appointing Mrs. Péralté an officer of public instruction.

Lotus de Païni's Travels