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拍品專文
Contes enfantines is a superb example of Hugues Merle’s complete mastery of the Academic technique. Excellent draftsmanship and a close study of human anatomy were considered the very foundation of the Academic tradition and students spent years at the Académie studying and drawing the human figure from life. The excellence of artists was measured upon their ability to accurately and naturally depict the human form and expression. For even the most experienced and decorated artists, the most difficult of all extremities to articulate in paint was considered to be human hands. Furthermore, the most challenging texture to reproduce, all the while keeping in true form with its appearance in nature, was human hair. The very thin, almost translucent glazes of color that needed to be applied one on top of another was overwhelming to even the most patient of artists. Only a handful of the 19th century painters have been able to truly replicate the shiny and silky surface of human hair all the while managing to give a sense of each individual strand. Among these one would count the great William Bouguereau, Émile Munier and Hugues Merle.
Contes enfantines is a complex, multifigural composition. At the center is the storyteller, a young woman with flowing blonde hair, dressed in rich ebony and adorned with flowers. She sits in a bower, surrounded by five children of various ages all in rapt attention to her story. She embraces the young boy to her left with one hand, while the other is raised in anticipation of the next interesting tidbit of her story. As a statement of artist’s bravado, Merle has chosen to place both of her hands in the center of the composition, clearly to demonstrate his complete mastery of this important tenet of the Academic tradition. Both the story teller and the children surrounding her are brought up close to the picture plane, and all are executed in strong, fully saturated colors; both conceits adopted by the artist in the 1860s in order to rival the work of his fellow Academician, William Bouguereau. The sense of immediacy is further enhanced by the fact that the children are all slightly cut off by the picture plane as if they are trying to gather closer in order to hear the clearly compelling story.
Like Bouguereau, Hugues Merle was a darling of American collectors and also like Bouguereau, by the close of the 19th century, his works were more popular in America and Britain than in France. By 1879, more than 50 works by Merle could be found in American collections. The American Register reported in that year that Americans had spent over three million dollars on French art, and by 1882 it was estimated they had spent more than five times that amount.
Contes enfantines was transferred to Knoedler in New York the same year it was completed, and was acquired by Robert Graves, a Brooklyn wallpaper manufacturer, a member of the Wallpaper Trust and an avid art collector.
Contes enfantines is a complex, multifigural composition. At the center is the storyteller, a young woman with flowing blonde hair, dressed in rich ebony and adorned with flowers. She sits in a bower, surrounded by five children of various ages all in rapt attention to her story. She embraces the young boy to her left with one hand, while the other is raised in anticipation of the next interesting tidbit of her story. As a statement of artist’s bravado, Merle has chosen to place both of her hands in the center of the composition, clearly to demonstrate his complete mastery of this important tenet of the Academic tradition. Both the story teller and the children surrounding her are brought up close to the picture plane, and all are executed in strong, fully saturated colors; both conceits adopted by the artist in the 1860s in order to rival the work of his fellow Academician, William Bouguereau. The sense of immediacy is further enhanced by the fact that the children are all slightly cut off by the picture plane as if they are trying to gather closer in order to hear the clearly compelling story.
Like Bouguereau, Hugues Merle was a darling of American collectors and also like Bouguereau, by the close of the 19th century, his works were more popular in America and Britain than in France. By 1879, more than 50 works by Merle could be found in American collections. The American Register reported in that year that Americans had spent over three million dollars on French art, and by 1882 it was estimated they had spent more than five times that amount.
Contes enfantines was transferred to Knoedler in New York the same year it was completed, and was acquired by Robert Graves, a Brooklyn wallpaper manufacturer, a member of the Wallpaper Trust and an avid art collector.