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Artist or Maker: CHARLES-ÉMILE-AUGUST CAROLUS-DURAN, French, 1838-1917
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Dimensions: 143 by 198 in.
360 by 500 cm
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF SEYMOUR STEIN
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Literature: Carolus-Duran 1837-1917, exhibition catalogue, Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2003, pp. 160-161, illustrated
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Notes: Carolus-Duran opened an atelier quite accidentally. In 1872, a Mr. Robert C. Hinckley from Boston, requested to become his pupil. Carolus-Duran refused this request but offered to come to his studio to critique his work. Mr. Hinckley followed suit and established a studio with Paul Batifaud-Vaur and every Tuesday and Thursday Carolus-Duran would visit their quarters to review their work. Through word-of-mouth, the studio expanded in number, moved to larger premises and eventually became one of the most popular ateliers in Paris. In an article in Century magazine in January 1886, Mr. Hinckley describes a typical day in the atelier of Carolus-Duran, "M. Duran is as popular as ever among his students, whom he generously continues to favor twice a week with his teaching. Twice each month M. Duran gives to his pupils a subject for a sketch. A day is fixed for the bring in of the sketches, and, after the regular lesson of the day, the easels are put aside and the sketches, all of the same subject, in charcoal, crayon, or oil, are placed in good light, on the floor, stools, or easels; the professor takes a seat, lights a cigarette, and the pupils gather around to listen to the criticisms of their works. Often these criticisms lengthen into talks, or as M. Duran entitle them, "lessons". As H. Barbara Weinberg points out, Carolus-Duran's studio "offered a real alternative to academic training, an alternative chosen by some eighty-one Americans-including thirty women-during the life of the atelier" (H. Barbara Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, p. 189).
Carolus-Duran's extraordinary popularity was inextricably linked to his unorthodox teaching methods. He stressed form and color over line, promoted direct painting, encouraged individuality and originality and discouraged imitation. "It is absurd to attempt to impose on artists one and the same mold," claimed Carolus-Duran, "in which all-powerful or weak, impassioned or timid-must form their thought, as it would be to constrain them to modify their physical natures until all should resemble a given model. Art lives only by individual expression. Where would we be if the great masters of all times had only looked to the past-they who not only prepared, but made the future?"
The Triumph of Bacchus is an extraordinarily ambitious tour-de-force and a remarkable departure for Carolus-Duran, who by 1889 was known as one of the pre-eminent portrait painters in Paris. This large-scale composition was completed in January 1889 and was exhibited for several months following the Salon. The same year writer Firmin Javel noted in L'Art français that the Triumph of Bacchus was an important work not only for the mis en scène but also for the quality of color and boldness of execution. It has been suggested that Carolus-Duran conceived the idea for the composition as early as 1879, the date of a preliminary sketch formerly in the collection of Pierre Carolus-Duran (see Carolus-Duran, 1837-1917, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2003, p. 160, exh. cat.). Additionally, Carolus-Duran may have been inspired by his 1878 success with The Triumph of Marie de Médici, a similarly monumental historical composition currently in the collection of the Musée du Louvre.
