Jim Blanchard’s Magnificent Louisiana Obsessions
The present day Napoleon House by artist Jim Blanchard
November 2024Artist Jim Blanchard spills the tea about his technique, his attachment to New Orleans, and his passion for Louisiana’s architectural treasures.
– by Bethany E. Bultman
Windsor Fine Arts on Royal Street – noteworthy as the South’s premiere dealer of Picassos and Rembrandts – is currently exhibiting fifteen of Jim Blanchard’s recent archival architectural watercolors.
It’s a rare opportunity for the public to see a collection of the artist’s latest work since most of his paintings are snapped up before the paint is dry.
Early-bird viewers at the opening of Blanchard’s show on November 2 at Windsor Fine Art, 221 Royal Street in the French Quarter, photo by Ellis Anderson
I first became aware of the artist in the early 1990s. Mary Anne Pecot de Boisblanc, the venerable primitive painter, told me her cousin “Jimmy” had been selected to create the official gift for Pope John Paul II’s visit to New Orleans a few years before. Her eyes danced with pride.
“Since Jimmy is a direct descendant of the first baby christened in Louisiana,” she confided in her gentle bayou cadence, “Archbishop Hannan knew how important his work would be to the Pope.”
That snippet of genealogical lore gave me absolutely no indication of his artistic talents, however. Then, in 2002, I came across one of Jim’s paintings, that of an extraordinary 1850s building that had been planned, but never built – Isle Derniere Hotel.
Several of my ancestors and their architects were bent on developing the grandest resort in the Gulf South, on Isle Derniere, a barrier island just off the Louisiana coast. By 1856, many fine homes already existed on the island and construction on the hotel was slated to begin.
Then, on August 10, a catastrophic hurricane wiped the barrier island off the planet in less than an hour. 300 victims perished in the storm, including 13 members of my family.
I’d been writing about and researching the story for more than a decade when I saw Jim’s painting of the fabled hotel in a private collection. He’d perfectly captured the ephemeral beauty of the island and the never-built hotel, the dreams that never came to be preserved in the aspic of history.
This modern-day rendering by New Orleans artists Jim Blanchard depicts the James Muggah family's new and improved hotel on Isle Derniere. Never realized, construction on the expanded hotel was set to begin at the close of the 1856 summer season. The Muggahs had contracted with the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans to manage the project and had collected a consortium of eager investors. Ironically, the hotel was to have been called The Trade Winds. Click here to read Bethany Bultman’s story, “In Memorium: Lost Lands.”
With pen-and-ink, watercolor and gouache, Jim Blanchard is an exacting topographical artist known for his elegantly hewn architectural watercolors of historic Louisiana buildings. I soon realized that knowing him was the equivalent of being given an all access pass to the crack in time where Louisiana hides its treasures.
For close to forty years, Blanchard has produced a stunning body of work. His more than three hundred paintings are housed in The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Historic New Orleans Collection, Louisiana State University, Tulane University, Great River Road Museum, and numerous private collections.
In the tradition of the famed cartographer and architectural realist painter, Marie Adrien Persac (1823-1873), each of Jim’s works represents a visual documentation that transcends time and place – with a twinkle in its eye.
The Crescent Billiard Hall, one of Blanchard’s new works in the show at Windsor Fine Art
FQJ : Each of your Magnificent Obsessions unlocks a structure obscured by time, myth, and sometimes neglect. What draws you to painting a particular French Quarter residence?
“Today, living just one block from the Mississippi River still spiritually bonds me to New Orleans,” begins Blanchard.
Blanchard self-identifies as a French Quarterite, although for the past three years, he’s been living and working at his Donaldsonville studio. It’s sixty miles upriver in a 175-year-old home near the mouth of Bayou Lafourche.
The artist can trace his Louisiana ancestors back eight generations to the original Acadian settlers.
“My cousins, in particular, Mary Lou Christovich and Mary Anne Picot de Boisblanc, told me about our ancestors with such knowledge! I felt I could smell their Sunday dinner cooking,” he says with a wide grin.
Blanchard recalls, “My love of the French Quarter first came from my grandparents, Mary and Dave Robichaux.” His Grandfather Robichaux, sounds larger than life. He founded a thriving oil and gas brokerage firm with offices in Thibodaux and downtown New Orleans.
“My grandparents often took me and their other fourteen grandchildren to New Orleans in the 1960s – although not all of us at once!” he adds with a chuckle.
Blanchard’s family at the Audubon Zoo in one of their many excursions into New Orleans in the 1960s. Photo courtesy Jim Blanchard
Blanchard recounts the joy of staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. “Getting dressed up and going downstairs to the Blue Room to see a show was a big deal to us kids who lived in a small community on the banks of Bayou Lafourche, one that hadn’t changed much since the 1920s,” he says.
“On Sundays, we’d walk down Royal Street en route to mass at St. Louis Cathedral,” the artist remembers. “My imagination was set afire by the amalgam of cultures co-existing in the historic part of the bustling city. Then, in my teens, I had the pleasure of being mentored by New Orleans' artist H. Alvin Sharpe, creator of the Mardi Gras doubloon.”
Later, as a young artist in the 1980s, Blanchard had the layers of the French Quarter peeled back for him by the surrealist photographer Clarence John Laughlin; and the brilliant collectors/antiquarians William Groves, Ray Samuel, Boyd Cruise, and Mathilda Stream, who befriended the aspiring chronicler.
JIm Blanchard in his Donaldsonville studio, courtesy Jim Blanchard
FQJ: You clearly tread that razor’s edge between hard-edged narrative and romantic illusion. What aspects of your training led you to your distinctive ability to unleash your unique majestic realism?
Blanchard and his six siblings and eight first cousins grew up next to one another. “My mother, Myra, and her twin sister, Aunt Mary, were artists who sold their work at galleries in New Orleans. Becoming a professional artist was in my blood,” he noted
Yet, after just one semester studying art at Nicholls State University, he dropped out, realizing he didn’t want to study other artists. He simply wished to learn the techniques he needed to translate his architectural visions to paper.
“That’s when my grandfather put me to work drawing oil field maps and doing research in the courthouses for his company,” blanchard explains. “The rest is history!”
FQJ: How do you capture the ephemeral essence of a structure?
Each of Jim’s archival architectural watercolors begins with a moment in time, a vision of the past, or unearthing an unfulfilled aspect of its history.
“Each of my ‘children,’” he says, “is treated like a sitting subject. People are incidental to the structures.” He adds, “I cherish the time I get to spend creating my works of art. They are the legacy I leave for the future.”
“People are incidental to the structures,” says Blanchard. Detail of one of the artist’s watercolors
To uncover the layers of the building's history, the artist begins with meticulous research at The Historic New Orleans Collection, Tulane University, the Louisiana State Archives, New Orleans Public Library Collection, and many private archives. He also taps into family history and stories.
“Often someone will come to my studio with a brown paper bag of their cherished archival treasures,” he exclaims. “The past has plenty to reveal.”
Delicious hues of color characterize Jim Blanchard’s works. According to the artist, the “City Beautiful Movement” premiered at the 1893 Chicago World Fair and the World’s Columbian Exposition. Soon buildings all over the country were slathered with brilliant white paint.
Prior to that, generations of Louisianians employed rich colors to create lavish settings as a backdrop for the lifestyles to which they aspired. To re-capture the authentic hues, he studies historic black and white photographs.
“I realized that if I can find a gentleman in each photograph, he is usually wearing a white linen shirt,” the artist notes. “That bright white becomes the epicenter of my color palette. Nothing in the photo is the same value as that white linen shirt.”
Blanchard references historic photographs like this of 400 - 418 Royal Street, buildings that were demolished to make way for the courthouse, photo circa 1905, the Sam Wilson Collection, courtesy the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Next, he places the building within the context of their surrounding environment before defining their essence with precise measurements.
“My mediums are ink, watercolor and gouache, all applied in layers to create the aged effect,” he says. To bring a building’s splendor to life, they are framed in period frames and eglomise (reverse painted black glass) mounting.”
FQJ: Three of the pieces in the show are in the French Quarter. Why these particular buildings?
After the death of his beloved grandfather in the 1980s, Jim Blanchard moved to the 900 block of Royal. After that, he lived on Governor Nicholls and then back to the 1200 block of Royal.
“Each section of the French Quarter is its own tiny principality,” he explains.
“The Quarter is a living museum, the ultimate collage of diverse architectural styles, history and lifestyles. Yet sometimes the authentic essence of a structure becomes shrouded in myth.”
The three French Quarter homes in the exhibition exemplify Blanchard’s perception of the neighborhood.
The Madame Elizabeth Real Pascal - Marin House, 932 Dumaine Street - Also known as Madame John’s Legacy
The house shown without a wall on the bottom level (as shown below). The building has been undergoing major construction, during which an archeological dig took place in April 2023 to determine if it originally had columns, much like the ones here in Blanchard’s painting. You can read that story here.
French Quarter resident and nationally recognized photographer Francis Benjamin Johnston photographed Madame John’s Legacy in 1937, Library of Congress. Read more about Francis Benjamin Johnson here in another FQJ piece by Frank Perez.
Elizabeth Real was born in Bordeaux, France in 1700. By the time she was in her late teens, she’d fallen on hard times. Thus, she was one of the first of more than 200 brides-to-be transported by the French crown to the Louisiana colony in 1719-20 to wed colonists. Known as the Casquette Filles (named for the small traveling chests where they carried their meager possessions), they were set ashore in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1719.
Once in the mosquito-infested Nouvelle Orleans, Elizabeth wed Jean Pascal, giving birth to their first child in 1721. By the
1726 Census, Jean Pascal and “his fat wife with child” were listed as living in the French Quarter.
After Pascal’s death in 1729 during the Natchez Revolt, Madam Elizabeth Pascal married her Dumaine Street neighbor, Captain Francois Marin, who was listed as an innkeeper.
Elizabeth managed his “recreational” garden and inn. By the time Marin died in 1740, as his widow, she’d attained a position within Nouvelle Orleans’ colonial society.
Jim Blanchard memorializes Elizabeth’s home/inn as it would have been prior to her death in 1777.
*Note: After the fire of 1788, the structure was rebuilt. As subsequent generations faced economic struggles, the building became dolled up with the name of a fictional character, Madame John, from a George Washington Cable (1844-1925) short story. The present structure, now under extensive renovations, is officially designated as the second-oldest building in the Mississippi Valley.
The Mayor Girod House- 500 Chartres Street
Detail of Jim Blanchard’s Mayor Girod House painting (full painting at top of this article)
The Mayor Girod House in 1900 —1905, Library of Congress
Nicholas Girod was born in the Savoy region of France in 1751. Upon arriving in the Louisiana colony, he soon became pivotal in shaping New Orleans. As a prosperous merchant and importer, he served as the fifth mayor of New Orleans. In fact, he was the first to be elected mayor after the city became part of the United States.
Motivated by his loathing for the English, he helped Andrew Jackson form local militias to defend the city against the British, fresh from their victory against Napoleon. Against all odds, Girod’s fighters and the American forces succeeded in stopping the British at the Battle of New Orleans.
When asked if he planned to learn English, after being inaugurated in French, Girod famously replied “No, the Americans must learn French!” He was instrumental in having the sidewalks paved and when he served as a city alderman, Girod ensured that the levee system was extended to protect the city from flooding.
In 1814, upon the death of his brother, Nicholas Girod inherited the building at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres. It was here that he built his three-and-a-half-story Creole townhouse depicted by Jim Blanchard.
In 1840 when Girod, a confirmed bachelor, died at home at a ripe old age, he left a generous endowment to care for French Orphans and Charity Hospital.
Even though Girod failed to orchestrate a plot to rescue the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, when the vilified former emperor died in 1821, his home is known today as the Napoleon House. Read our FQJ story about the restaurant and its history here.
The Gaffin Mansion: 1140 Royal Street
The Gaffin Mansion, 1937, Library of Congress
An 1838 lawsuit concerning the property at the corner of Royal and Gov. Nicholls Streets provided Jim Blanchard with all the specifics he needed to bring the home to life.
We see the stately three-story stucco structure Pierre E. Trastour (1804-1876) built for Charles Gaffin (1800-1868). In 1838, Gaffin’s home was built on the vacant lot where, on April 10, 1834, a fire and angry mob had destroyed the two-story Federal style home of the infamous sadists, Dr. and Mrs. Louis Lalaurie.
Later, during the Reconstruction, the Gaffin Mansion served as one of New Orleans’ first integrated schools. Later, it served as a Music Conservatory. From 1923-1932 the building served as The Warrington House, a shelter for impoverished men.
Today it is simply known as the notorious “haunted house.”
Travis Wilson, Doulas Binney, Jim Blanchard and gallery manager Kyla Bernberg at the Windsor Fine Art opening of Jim Blanchard’s new work
"Windsor Fine Art prides itself on being a French Quarter staple in the arts,” says gallery manager Kyla Bernberg. “When I set out to curate an iconic local exhibit, it was only natural to select Jim Blanchard. He is not only an incredible artist, but also conveys a wealth of historical knowledge pertaining to Louisiana architecture.”
“What an honor to have our walls filled with the rich colors, impeccable structures, and historical narratives which are interwoven in Jim's work,” she continues.
The show is up until December 2nd.
Windsor Fine Art, 221 Royal Street, New Orleans| info@WindsorFineArt.com | 504.586.0202
Information to purchase a copy of Jim Blanchard’s book can be found on his website.
Magnificent Obsessions
New Orleans Buildings and Residences | 300 Years of New Orleans Architecture
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