Léonard Sarluis


Salomon-Léon Sarluis, known as Léonard Sarluis, was a naturalised French Symbolist painter.
Sarluis arrived in Paris in 1894 and became a well-known boulevardier. He travelled widely, including to Naples, Italy and to Russia. He was praised by Jean Lorrain and Oscar Wilde.
He exhibited at the Salon de la Rose+Croix and the Salon des Artistes Français, and with Armand Point he designed the poster for the fifth salon of that group. It depicted the Ideal in the form of Perseus holding the severed head of Émile Zola in reference to the Greek myth in which Perseus decapitated the Gorgon Medusa. For the Symbolists, Zola exemplified in literature the oppressive Naturalism they rejected.

Notable works

Sarluis completed the decorative illustrations for the refectory bar at the Paris newspaper Le Journal and worked for years on a Mystic Interpretation of the Bible, the paintings for which he exhibited in London in 1928. He illustrated Gaston de Pawlowski's Voyage to the Land of the Fourth Dimension which Jean Clair thought was the inspiration for Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass.