Current Motion Image
This is an AI image imagining what my two great great grandparents may have looked like in 1840 in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.
Studies for “Cajun Love Song”
This gallery of images shows the process in developing animation cells based on AI images, and hand-painted watercolors. The story is a love story between a Jewish man from Germany who, in 1836 decides to travel to the United States where he meets a young Catholic woman in sugar cane country. She ultimately converts to Judaism to marry the man who goes on to be a successful businessman.
1858, Marie Adrien Persac, painter, version #2 on the Docks at Le Havre, France. [AI]
The Animation will be narrated by an historical figure,Marie Adrien Persac, a fine painter, cartographer known as “Louisiana’s painter.”He is depicted here in two character renderings , circa 1858 in a pseudo watercolor style.[AI]
Jacob on the Dock, New Orleans, 1836 [AI]
Miriam (neè Marie) Estelle Berthelot, as a young woman.
Jacob in 1845 [AI-enabled animation, based on my watercolor]
Animation screentest of Jacob, from an actual photo.
Marie Adriene Persac
The painter Marie Adrien Persac, will serve to narrate the animation. A highly educated French man and a fine artist, who cartographically mapped the Mississippi River Plantation homes as well as painted them. He would paint portraits of the houses in exchange for room and board.
These paintings below also show my great great grandfather’s establishment of a mercantile business and later his son’s creation of a general merchandising store, B. Lemann and Bros in Donaldsonville, Louisiana on the Mississippi. The intention is to show the industrious contributions of the outsider to the newly formed United States through the tumult and devastation of a civil war and the values and ethics that his faith had instilled in him.
A watercolor from the AI source image [below] of Jacob making a deal in New Orleans
An AI image, created in the style of Edgar Degas’s painting The Cotton Merchants depicting Jacob Lemann in his role of a “handelmann” (someone who survives by his connections and networks)
Jacob at 45 with his son inspecting a wheelwright’s operation.
Jacob Lemann, middle aged, traveling transatlantic on the SS McLellan, bound for New Orleans from Le Havre, France.
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- Marie Adriene Persac
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- As a child coming from the Alsace region and the Western State of Hesse from little towns called Darmstadt or Hechtsheim.
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- SS. NEPTUNE on departure from Le Havre, France, bound for Louisiana.
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- His profession was listed in his travel papers as a Butcher.
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- Jacob only wrote in Hebrew, he needed others to sign his documents.
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- A young 27 year old Jacob Lemann, dockside getting his paperwork in order for his journey to the New World.
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- Getting his paperwork and belongings together upon arrival in Louisiana.
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- A crowd gathers when Jacob arrives.
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- Many German Jews were spread out throughout the South.
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- As he aged, Jacob settled into the rural lifestyle of a Jewish Merchant.
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- male crowd of German Jewish men prior to emigration.
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- Persac would go on to paint Palo Alto Plantation, prior to Jacob Lemann’s ownership from Pierre Ayraud.
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- PALO ALTO PLANTATION by Persac
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- B. Lemann and Bros, was my great grandfather’s general merchandise store in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, on the National Historic Registry.
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- Horse and Buggy alongside Bayou Teche.
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- While Jacob was away overseas in Paris, his future wife, Marie Berthelot helped her father manage a plantation.
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- A watercolor showing M. Persac Painting.
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- Eventually Jacob would be a dealmaker using his connections. In the Old country he would be called a Handleman– someone who survived by his networks.
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- Jacob would continue back and forth across the Atlantic to Paris on business.
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- Alongside the Mississippi River looking South. The “River Road.” had many large Plantation Houses.
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- Early on, he was considered a peddler.
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- A watercolor sketch of a peddler on the Bayou road.
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- Many Jewish male immigrants in mid 19th Century were considered “peddlers”.
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- Persac painting in the hot Louisiana sun.
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- Persac would return to his room to formalize his painting, even to decoupage figures onto his paintings from magazines.
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- Persac’s studio view: he would eventually paint PALO ALTO PLANTATION, a sugar plantation he would receive from the debts owed to him before the end of the Civil War..
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- Persac would paint river home portraits in exchange for room and board.
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- A live Oak on a small bayou
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- Persac a French painter, cartographer and architect, painting the bayou. [AI]
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- Persac painting Bayou Teche on a day off.
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- Typical scene of a bayou with old growth Live Oaks and Spanish Moss.
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- Sharecroppers harvesting sugar after a crop burn.
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- The housekeeper at PALO ALTO PLANTATION, Miss Maybelle.
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- This is Palo Alto’s Sugar Mill with many of the field hands, formerly slaves.