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Lot Essay
“The only difference between immortal Greece and the present is Sigmund Freud” (S. Dalí, quoted in R. Descharnes and G. Néret, Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Cologne, 1994, vol. 1, p. 276).
Executed in 1952, Salvador Dalí’s Les trois grâces reprises anew the ancient Greek subject of the three graces that had long captured artists’ imagination across millennia, from ancient Pompeian ruins and Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera to Robert Delaunay’s Les trois grâces de la ville de Paris. These daughters of Zeus, deifications of youth and beauty, first appeared in Dalí’s oeuvre over a decade prior in an oil painting from circa 1938, Plage enchantée aux trois grâces fluides (Descharnes no. 701; The Dalí Museum, Saint Petersburg, Florida), in which their figures seamlessly intertwine in fluid flashes with their barren surrounding. Here, in contrast, across epic dimensions do the graces’ lithe figures span the length of the composition, dwarfing their earthly environment, each goddess wholly engrossed in their intertwined dance.
Such mythological, religious and allegorical themes frequently populated the Catalan’s oeuvre—in spite of its insistent modernity—finding greater weight around the mid-century as he grew increasingly disenchanted by the prospects afforded by modern painting and sought to interpret timeless subjects through his own psychoanalytical agenda. Dalí believed that, for painting to survive, younger artists needed to return to classic principles of technique, skill and craftsmanship in order to attain the perfection and uniform brilliance of the work of the Renaissance masters. It was to Raphael that Dalí repeatedly turned at this time, musing, “and who knows if someday I shall not without intending it be considered the Raphael of my period?” (quoted in 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, New York, 1948).
The year prior to the present work's execution, the artist interpreted Raphael’s Madonna through his own visual idiom in Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée (Descharnes no. 984; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh). In studying the work of the Cinquecento master, Dalí likely would have encountered Raphael’s own Les trois grâces (Musée Condé, Chantilly). Despite being separated by centuries, the two compositions bear similar compositional hallmarks in their clarity of form, implicit geometry and timeless elegance. It may be that Dalí was once more referencing Raphael, a further declaration of the artistic lineage that the Spaniard undoubtedly felt. And yet, in spite of this, Dalí imbued the subject with his distinctly modern vernacular, rendering the graces’ vibrant gowns through brilliant pigment and muscular brushwork and situating them in his otherworldly landscape, punctuated by the familiar outstretched arm of Port Lligat’s rocky coastline.
Executed in 1952, Salvador Dalí’s Les trois grâces reprises anew the ancient Greek subject of the three graces that had long captured artists’ imagination across millennia, from ancient Pompeian ruins and Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera to Robert Delaunay’s Les trois grâces de la ville de Paris. These daughters of Zeus, deifications of youth and beauty, first appeared in Dalí’s oeuvre over a decade prior in an oil painting from circa 1938, Plage enchantée aux trois grâces fluides (Descharnes no. 701; The Dalí Museum, Saint Petersburg, Florida), in which their figures seamlessly intertwine in fluid flashes with their barren surrounding. Here, in contrast, across epic dimensions do the graces’ lithe figures span the length of the composition, dwarfing their earthly environment, each goddess wholly engrossed in their intertwined dance.
Such mythological, religious and allegorical themes frequently populated the Catalan’s oeuvre—in spite of its insistent modernity—finding greater weight around the mid-century as he grew increasingly disenchanted by the prospects afforded by modern painting and sought to interpret timeless subjects through his own psychoanalytical agenda. Dalí believed that, for painting to survive, younger artists needed to return to classic principles of technique, skill and craftsmanship in order to attain the perfection and uniform brilliance of the work of the Renaissance masters. It was to Raphael that Dalí repeatedly turned at this time, musing, “and who knows if someday I shall not without intending it be considered the Raphael of my period?” (quoted in 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, New York, 1948).
The year prior to the present work's execution, the artist interpreted Raphael’s Madonna through his own visual idiom in Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée (Descharnes no. 984; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh). In studying the work of the Cinquecento master, Dalí likely would have encountered Raphael’s own Les trois grâces (Musée Condé, Chantilly). Despite being separated by centuries, the two compositions bear similar compositional hallmarks in their clarity of form, implicit geometry and timeless elegance. It may be that Dalí was once more referencing Raphael, a further declaration of the artistic lineage that the Spaniard undoubtedly felt. And yet, in spite of this, Dalí imbued the subject with his distinctly modern vernacular, rendering the graces’ vibrant gowns through brilliant pigment and muscular brushwork and situating them in his otherworldly landscape, punctuated by the familiar outstretched arm of Port Lligat’s rocky coastline.