Seraphine louis biography

French painter

Séraphine Louis, known as Séraphine de Senlis (Séraphine of Senlis; 3 September – 11 December ), was a French painter in the Outsider art.^[1] Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art.

The intensity of her images, both in colour and replicative design, is sometimes interpreted as a reflection of her own psyche, walking a tightrope between ecstasy and mental illness.

Early life

Louis was born in Arsy (Oise) on 3 September Her father was a manual laborer and her mother came from a farmworking background.

Seraphine louis biography

Louis's mother died on her first birthday and her father, who remarried, also died before she was seven; at which point, she came under the charge of her eldest sister. She first worked as a shepherdess but, by , she was engaged as a domestic worker at the convent of the Sisters of Providence in Clermont, Oise.

Beginning in , she was employed as a housekeeper