Jacques Emile Blanche’s portrait of James Joyce

*Jacques Emile Blanche’s portrait of James Joyce, oil on canvas, 1935. This portrait of Joyce was painted in Paris at a time when his daughter Lucia Anna was suffering mental illness. She had been diagnosed schizophrenic and hospitalised in Zurich. Joyce moved to Paris in 1920 and lived there until 1940. During this time he wrote Finnegans Wake, which would take 17 years to complete, published in London with the assistance of T. S. Eliot (see portrait by Patrick Heron in previous post) After a short stint in London, he returned to Paris in 1931 when Lucia’s mental health had deteriorated. Once she had been hospitalised in Zurich and after the completion of Finnegans Wake, he moved to Zurich in 1940 where he died in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich.*