After abandoning medical school, Fernand Desmoulin studied fine arts in Paris. He became an accomplished master in the field of engraving and etching, producing mainly conformist yet skillful portraits. Desmoulin become some sort of preferred engraver of the literary and artistic celebrities of his time.

In the last decade of the 19th century he experienced a series of hardships deeply upsetting him with the death of his first wife in 1894 and in 1899, the separation from his lover.

In this situation of depression, in 1900 he came into contact with spiritualism. Desmoulin hoped to get answers to his desperate situation and consolation from the spirits. For some time, he was in close contact with discarnate entities on the other side who advised him and gave him instructions. Finally, they began to guide his hand. Desmoulin began to write and draw automatically.

These mediumistic drawings are strikingly different from his conformist conscious works. His hand moved over the paper in rapid, sweeping sheets. A completely new freedom seems to manifest itself in these drawings of fascinating expressiveness. Figures seem on the verge of emerging from the twilight like fleeting apparitions, not yet fully formed, but also not remaining in the formless. The drawings seem like an artistic exploration of an intermediate realm, full of creative pictorial inventions, at times of romantic radiance, sometimes of expressive immediacy.

sourced from https://mediumistic.art/artists/23-desmoulin-fernand#BIOGRAPHY on 2 Sept 2021