Victor Hugo - The Town of Viandan with Stone Cross

I recently visited a fascinating exhibition of the drawings of Victor Hugo. (‘Astonishing Things’ is at The Royal Academy, London until 29 June, 2025.)

'There is nothing like a dream to create the future.’
Victor Hugo

Hugo was a renowned nineteenth century novelist, the author of ‘The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’ and ‘Les Misérables.’ He was also a poet, playwright and politician. And he was a talented artist.

Working in charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink, Hugo created satirical caricatures to share with friends and family. He also sketched extensively in his travel journals: detailed depictions of landscapes, windmills, cobbled streets and stairwells. A committed Romantic, he was particularly fond of drawing mournful gothic castles and turbulent ocean scenes. Here are spires, towers and turrets, shrouded in mist, looming over the villages beneath. Here are breakwaters, cliffs and causeways; shipwrecks, serpents and storm-tossed seas.

'Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.’

Hugo’s images could be rather gloomy. A disembodied hand reaches for the sky. A spider weaves its web while a town sleeps in the background. A toxic machineel tree throws a skull-shaped shadow. A mushroom cloud with a mysterious human face rises above the desolate countryside.

'Those who do not weep do not see.’

**Victor Hugo - The Town of Vianden Seen Through a Spider’s Web, 1871**

Hugo held strong political views. A royalist in his youth, he became an ardent republican, living in exile on the Channel Islands for nearly 20 years because of his opposition to Napoleon III. He imagined a United States of Europe, campaigned for the abolition of slavery and advocated the preservation of historic architecture.

'Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.’

Hugo was also strongly opposed to the death penalty. After the 1854 execution in Guernsey of a convicted murderer, he made a series of drawings of a hanged man, notably a work he titled ‘Ecce Lex’ (‘behold the law’). A few years later he gave permission for this image to be made into a print protesting against the execution of an American anti-slavery activist.

'No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.’

Hugo’s enquiring mind prompted him to conduct seances in the hope of contacting the spirits of the dead. He experimented with inkblots, fingerprints and rubbings; stencils, silhouettes and collage. He redesigned his own home. He collected and signed pebbles, and created pure abstract forms, which he termed ‘caches’ (‘stains’ or ‘accidental marks’).

Hugo was also interested in unconscious creativity. Deliberately letting his hand move freely over paper, he would draw meandering pencil lines that suggested comical, sinister, outlandish creatures, an imagination running wild. Similar ‘automatic’ processes were adopted by the Surrealists in the 1920s.

'A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labour and there is invisible labour.'

Though they pursued Romantic themes, Hugo’s drawings rarely had any direct connection to his literary work. I suspect that his sketching was the product of a restless brain, a welcome alternative outlet for his ideas. They were in a sense a Creative Digression, a temporary departure, an opportunity to flex different imaginative muscles.

'Not being heard is no reason for silence.'

I was reminded of Joni Mitchell’s decision periodically to suspend her songwriting in favour of painting. Similarly, the poet Sylvia Plath painted and sketched throughout her life. Such parallel processes can enrich each other.

'An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.'

Perhaps anyone working in a creative profession should consider sometimes switching out of their chosen mode and medium, taking a break from the relentless quest for excellence, allowing the mind to run free for a while. We could all benefit from a Creative Digression.

'Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.'

'If you kissed the sun right out of the sky for me,
And if you told me all the lies that I deserve,
And if you laid all night in the rain for me,
Well, I couldn't love you more,
Just couldn't love you more,
I couldn't love you more.
And if you loved me 'til my eyes gave no more shine for you,
If you walked beside me all the long way home,
And if you wasted all of your time on me,
Well, I couldn't love you more,
Just couldn't love you more,
I couldn't love you more,
Just couldn't love you more.

And if you gave me all the things I'd never ask of you,
And if you showed me all the ways you have to cry,
And if you laid all night in the rain for me,
I couldn't love you more,
Just couldn't love you more,
Just couldn't love you more.’

John Martyn, ‘Couldn’t Love You More'

No. 518