Seeing Visions, Painting Visions: On psychology and representation under the early Third Republic

Research into conditions such as hysteria in early Third Republic France by doctors such as Jean-Martin Charcot and Hippolyte Bernheim - 'la nouvelle psychologie' - had an impact on the visual arts. Analysing a wide range of images of people having visions or hallucinations, from mural decorations in public buildings through a wide range of exhibition paintings to prints, the argument sets them in their historical context, including for example debates about Joan of Arc and Lourdes as a pilgrimage site. In particular, the article questions whether Paul Gauguin's celebrated painting Vision of the Sermon (1888) engaged with current discourse, arguing that pictorial avant-gardism did not necessarily engage with modern notions of psychology.