Word: convents
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Intently and seriously, Mère Geneviève studied the space for which she will design the stained glass. The brief journey from her convent at suburban Meudon involved a rare trip into the outside world for the 62-year-old nun who has spent 34 years of her life behind convent walls. Yet in the outside world she is fast becoming a celebrity. Artists and connoisseurs of Paris compare her work with that of Rembrandt, Durer, Goya. French countesses drive out from Paris to the convent at Meudon where she painstakingly turns out her strong, tortured etchings...
...seemed like countless other would-be painters of the day. What brought her to the Benedictines was a combination of esthetic and religious feelings that for years left her vocation in doubt. She describes a memorable Easter-week visit, at the age of 23, to church services at the convent she later entered...
...harsh turbulence. One day an art collector named Dr. Paul Alexandre came upon some of Genevieèe's work at a church sale. Impressed, he began to buy it whenever he could; eventually, he slipped a book of Rembrandt sketches for her through the grill of the convent. Later, he sent her a printing press and etcher's tools...
...Figaro Littéraire to let her announce her discovery. Her verdict: "[They have] the faith of the great primitives shining in each of their faces, with a terror that recalls only Goya." Almost overnight, Mère Geneviève's name was made, and the convent began to sell more sets of her etchings at around $60 a set. Just as important, the nuns began to accept her work as something more than merely strange and disturbing...
Token of her new status was last month's commission to design the new convent's windows. She is giving the project much thought, but there is no hurrying her. Instead of beginning sketches at once, she went right ahead with her etchings to illustrate the Gospel of St. Luke. "I have ideas, yes," she said. "But I am not ready to begin...