July 29, 2024 – Fr. Oscar Magnan, SJ, was born May 16, 1929, in the city of Cienfuegos on the southern coast of Cuba. His father was French and his mother Swedish, From the time he was seven years old he was fascinated with drawing – so much so that his mother (to develop his talent and to save the walls of their home from Fr. Magnan’s artistic hand) had him take adult art courses in a local art school in Cienfuegos. His family had an artistic flair, and Fr. Magnan himself reported that “In my family, everybody was a dancer. My grandmother was a dancer, my mother a dancer, my sister a dancer.” The rumor has been confirmed that as a dashing young man he himself danced a mean flamenco.
In 1949, Fr. Magnan entered the Society of Jesus on September 23, in Havana, Cuba. We know few specific details about his training in the Jesuit course of studies. We do know that as a scholastic, he studied and/or taught at the Seminary of Santo Tomás de Aquino in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1957-1959) and at Colegio de Belén in Havana (1959-1960) just before the Castro government confiscated all religious schools and expelled the Jesuits. Oscar did his theology studies at Regis College in Toronto (1960-64); and was ordained a priest on June 16, 1963 in Toronto, Canada. He did his tertianship in Drongen, Belgium; and took his final vows in Paris, France on February 2, 1967. Jesuit records next have Oscar studying in Europe for five years, for a year in Rome and then at the University of Paris (1965-70).
During Fr. Magnan’s long and productive life he managed to earn a Master of fine arts degree from Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in Havana, master’s degrees from St. Mary’s University in Halifax in Nova Scotia (1964) and from Oxford University in England, and finally a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne at the University of Paris in 1975.
An article written in December 2014 in the Peacock Press of St. Peter’s University described Fr. Magnan as “The son of a French man and a Swedish woman, who grew up across Europe as well as the United States and Cuba . . .” The article quotes Fr. Magnan as saying of himself “I don’t have roots in any place.” However, we do know that in 1970 Fr. Magnan was assigned to St. Peter’s in Jersey City, and after 49 years there, his roots went pretty deep. At St. Peter’s Oscar was a professor of drawing, painting, sculpture, aesthetics and art history in the Department of fine arts. He served as chairman of the department and director of SPU’s fine arts Gallery for over 20 years and served as the curator of the university’s art collection.
In addition to all of this, Fr. Magnan worked as a restorer of Old Master paintings. He was invited and was very pleased to participate in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel restoration project in 1985. His paintings have been featured in several one-man shows in North America and Europe, and he is the winner of awards from the Canada Council, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hereward Lester Cooke Foundation. His work is represented in several collections, including those of the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
After retiring from teaching at St. Peter’s University, in 2019 Fr. Magnan had to pull up those deep Jersey City roots and accept an assignment to the Jesuit Health Facility at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx to pray for the Church and for the Society of Jesus which he had served so long and so well. There he continued to paint while he was able until his health began to decline. He died peacefully on July 25th at Murray-Weigel Hall. May he rest in peace.
