MASP

Eugène Delacroix

The Autumn – Bacchus and Ariadne, 1856-63

  • Author:
    Eugène Delacroix
  • Bio:
    Saint-Maurice-en-Chalencon, França, 1798-Paris, França ,1863
  • Title:
    The Autumn – Bacchus and Ariadne
  • Date:
    1856-63
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    197,5 x 166,5 x 4 cm
  • Credit line:
    Compra, 1958
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00069
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



A scholar of the classics, Delacroix wrote about his work and that of other artists throughout his life, thus contributing to his stature as a proponent of romantic painting. He traveled to personally meet painter John Constable (1773-1837), in England, and to see the work of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), in Spain. These references were fundamental for Delacroix to break free from the traditional rigor of French painting; rather than striving to create objectively precise depictions, his aim was to suggest sensations and feelings. The works by Delacroix in MASP’s collection were commissioned by French industrialist Jacques Frédéric Hartmann (1822-1880) to decorate his residence. In them, Delacroix associates the theme of the four seasons to Greco-Roman mythology. The same broad brushstrokes are used for the settings and the characters, and the movement is not only in the gestures and interaction, but in the rhythm of the brushstrokes themselves. The curves of the rocks, the billowing clouds, the vegetation and the waters seem to accompany the sinuosity of the bodies, imparting tension to the set. From a distance, the large-format canvases present the scenes in their totality, with a wealth of details. From up close, each segment functions independently, highlighting the patches of color, especially the masses of ocher and red, and of green and blue.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017




By Luciano Migliaccio
Delacroix took up this theme for the first time in 1821, when French actor François-Joseph Talma asked him to paint four door transoms for his home. The painter chose to depict the four seasons of the year, which he personified as four deities of Classical mythology. The use of this type of painting had been widely adopted in the decoration of rococo environments. The unusual allegories the painter chose to paint instead of conventional themes represent the phases of the solar cycle allusive to ancient theories of human nature and character. More than thirty years later, Delacroix took up this theme again when he painted four panels with mythological scenes for Alsatian industrialist Frederick Hartmann and patron of art for his home in Colmar. Evidently he got this commission before January 9th, 1856, because entries in the painter’s journal on that date include several possible choices of symbols for the four seasons. Robaut (p. 449, n. 1792) cites sixteen sheets of drawings offered at Delacroix’s post-humous estate sale (n. 379) as containing preliminary ideas and studies of the live model for the four decorative compositions. Following this phase the artist produced sketches which Robaut dated 1862, suggesting that they were small-format replicas of the final works. Among these sketches, the only one known to be still in existence, Spring, is conserved at the Musée Fabre, of Mont-pellier. The French critic pointed out an apocryphal increment added to this sketch at a later date, based on the difference in its size in comparison to the other three canvases. In a journal entry, possibly of April 14th, 1860, Delacroix listed ten works including a few masterpieces such as Arabian Horses Fighting in a Stable (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), with the remark “progressing considerably in the four paintings of seasons, for Hartmann”, which proves that the definitive paintings were already being painted. On January 3rd, 1861, another notation confirmed he was still working on these paintings: “Measures supplied by Mr. Fritz Hartmann for the Seasons paintings: 1.92 x 1.62” – which differ only slightly from the actual canvas measures. Given that the client died shortly after this event, thus causing the work to be discontinued, Robaut designated three of the four canvases as “sketches” (Spring, Summer, and Winter, which were practically in the same finishing stage as Autumn), though this is not the word he uses in respect to the replicas. We owe to Robaut the following revelation, which he probably wrote before 1885: “According to public opinion, these four canvases were retouched by another hand”. And in effect, they reappeared on the market finished by an academic painter (Bardi 1954, p. 67). Around 1930, the repaintings were removed and the paintings, shown in exhibitions where they provoked controversy. Bardi (1987) described the long path the Hartmann Seasons had to travel, due to their doubtful origin, from exhibitions to art galleries until Bardi himself decided to purchase them for the Masp Collection, as he was convinced that the technical and formal uniformity of the compositions were to reveal, in all their parts, undeniable aspects of Delacroix’s personality. According to Camesasca (1988, p. 191), here the sensitivity of discrimination that Delacroix showed in his earlier production was replaced by a masterful soundness that precluded the correction of physical structure, bearing, and layout of the composition, while color texture vibrates like resounding choral singing. The same author compares it with the lively colors of the Saint Michael painted on the ceiling of the Church of Saint-Sulpice, in Paris (1979, p. 40). Opportunely, Sylvestre cited William Turner’s sketches for their quality color. More specifically, it seems to me that Delacroix was influenced by Turner’s paintings such as Dido Founding Carthage (1815, London, National Gallery) and Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus. The English painter’s influence becomes evident not only in the technique but also in the manner in which Delacroix addresses the mythological theme and his choice of icons. Turner allowed Delacroix to combine the expressive and constructive conception of color in Rubens as well as in the Flemish artists, with the typical French Classical tradition in mythological landscapes by Poussin and Claude Lorraine. As in Turner’s production, in Delacroix’s paintings the overpowering force of nature is rendered in the spiral organization of landscape elements that prevail in the pictures and correspond with one another, thus producing a constant interrelation of concave and convex, as Aguilar observed (1991, p. 5o). Such a spatial organization enhances the universal content of mythical episodes involving the relationship between the masculine element and the female element, featured in Diana and Juno as a destroying force. In his study of the iconography illustrating Delacroix’s seasons, Ballas himself stated that the meanings of the Hartmann pictures suggest an ethical judgment that confers on them a moral dimension. However, this dimension cannot be limited to the rendition of the “great melancholy that, with the passing of time, increasingly marked the personality and the work of Delacroix;” rather, it should be seen as an attempt to reworks an updated version of the Classical traditions. The Hartmann’s Four Seasons are, therefore, important to an understanding of how Turner was interpreted in France, as well as his influence in the formation of such pivotal artists for modern painting such as Cézanne and Seurat.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



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