Knock Museum Receives Funding From Heritage Council For Preservation Of Unique Painting

Knock Museum Delighted To Receive Heritage Council Funding

Knock Museum is delighted to have received Heritage Council funding through the Community Heritage Grant Scheme 2025 for the production and installation of a custom-built climate-controlled display case by Monaghan-based Darac.  This showcase will enable the safe display of an original and exquisite painting of St. Thérèse of Lisieux by French artist Edgar Maxence (1871-1954) in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

Edgar Maxence was a French Symbolist painter. He was taught by Elie Delaunay and Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is a contemporary of Henri Evenepoel, Jules Flandrin, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Léon Printemps, Georges Rouault and other notable alumni from this famous school. He exhibited in the Salon des Artistes Français from 1894 until 1939, and was active on the salon’s committees and juries. Maxence combined a highly trained technique with a taste for medieval and mythical subjects and for hermetic imagery; he exhibited at the Salon de la Rose+Croix from 1895 to 1897.

In 1920 he painted the image of Our Lady on the vaulted ceiling of the choir in the Basilica of the Rosary in Lourdes. He also illustrated the book Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc (1945) by Jean-Joseph-Léonce Villepelet (Bishop of Nantes 1936–1966).

The painting will be on display in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in 2026.