(1756 Dijon – Florence 1795)
Bacchante and Satyr
Oil on canvas laid down on cardboard
40,5 x 33 cm
Framed : 54,5 x 46,5 cm
Signed et dated at the lower left : « B. Gagneraux. 1789. »
Provenance : Private Collection, France
Born in Dijon to a cooper father, nothing initially suggested that Bénigne Gagneraux would, during his short life, become one of the most admired and sought-after painters in Rome and Stockholm. The young artist was fortunate to come of age at a time when the School of Drawing in Dijon opened its doors in 1765, under the guidance of the painter and sculptor François Devosge. Devosge became Gagneraux’s master when the latter entered the new institution in 1770. Exceptionally gifted, Gagneraux won the Prix de Rome in 1776, newly established by the Estates of Burgundy, and received a grant that enabled him to complete his artistic training in the “Eternal City”.
Living modestly, Gagneraux is said to have entered the service of a fan-maker to support himself, alongside his activities of copying and study. His reputation seems to have spread throughout the city after he fell ill and, miraculously recovered, drew in 1784 vast charcoal and white chalk sketches of Bacchanals on the walls of a Roman charterhouse. That same year, King Gustav III of Sweden and his court visited Rome and greatly admired the young artist’s style. The king, in particular, purchased from him a large mythological composition, Oedipus the Blind Recommending His Family to the Gods, 1784, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Gagneraux expressed his talent most fully through his favourite theme, for which he is best known: Bacchanals and their participants, from satyrs to bacchantes and cupids. The painter particularly enjoyed depicting all the members of Bacchus’s retinue, playing or dancing, whether in Arcadian landscapes or at the edge of the woods. Indeed, the last work he painted, Bacchanal, is emblematic of his production, although it leaves some doubt as to whether its unfinished aesthetic was intentional or not. The painter’s life was cut short in 1795, while he was in Florence, the city to which he had fled following the riots that broke out in Rome as a result of the French Revolution. Thus, this work, sharing the same subject as our oil on canvas laid down on cardboard, shows that satyrs and bacchantes occupied both the painter’s mind and his brush until the very end of his life.
These scenes of bucolic festivities featuring divine beings also captivated some of the most eminent figures in Rome. Following the example of the Swedish court, Prince Marcantonio Borghese commissioned Gagneraux to create a painting intended to decorate one of the ceilings of the Villa Pinciana. However, the painting proved so successful that it was moved and hung in the Galleria Borghese, where it is now displayed on the ceiling of Room XVIII, dedicated to Jupiter and Antiope. The work had a significant impact, influencing artists such as the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, and launched the career of the engraver Giovanni Folo, thanks to its reproduction in print.
Our painting, smaller in scale than these large compositions, also reveals a livelier and more intimate touch, closer to the artist himself, where the meticulous yet generous brushstrokes create a softly textured, velvety surface.
It was most likely a painting made for an art enthusiast or collector from the Roman or Swedish circles, who wished to display on the walls of his study a work by the most highly regarded French artist in Rome between 1780 and 1790. On this note, King Gustav III of Sweden’s sculptor, Johan Tobias Sergel, commissioned Gagneraux in 1784 to produce Satyr, Bacchante and Cupid, now held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Whether in brushwork, dimensions, colours, or subject matter, this painting is remarkably close to our own. It provides a convincing idea of the kind of patrons who might have desired such a work.
Our canvas depicts two figures crowned with vine tendrils, dancing back-to-back: a satyr, with his goat-like legs, on the left, and a bacchante on the right. The latter draws us into their intoxicating dance with her gaze, while the faun turns towards her to follow the rhythm. Each holds an attribute of Bacchus, the god who inspires them: the cluster of grapes, symbol of wine and intoxication, and the cup, sacred image of libation as well as of the drinker, of sharing, and of festivity. The two figures perform their ritual dance at the heart of a calm, open landscape, where a golden vase, in the lower right corner, is gradually being overgrown by the vine. Perhaps a hidden message lies within?
In any case, and although his life was short, Bénigne Gagneraux managed, from his beginnings in Dijon, to secure a distinguished place for himself in Rome and among all its visitors, including the European princely courts. His position as an artist allowed him to act as a witness to his time and its diplomacy, as illustrated by his celebrated painting Pope Pius VI Visiting, with Gustav III of Sweden, the Gallery of Antiquities at the Vatican (1786), now displayed at the National Gallery in Prague.
The sharpness, delicacy, and richness of the pictorial surface that he achieved on his canvases made him one of the leading artists of the late eighteenth century. In this respect, our oil on canvas laid down on cardboard, with its more intimate and fluid character, offers a more subtle insight into the virtuosity with which he conceived these mythological themes so dear to him — themes that travelled as far as the Swedish court and influenced numerous artists, including Louis-Jean Desprez and Adrien-Louis Masreliez.