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拍品专文
The present painting almost certainly depicts Thomas Couture’s daughter Berthe, costumed in a laurel wreath and in a pose initially conceived for one of the figures of ‘The Promises’ as a study for the artist’s The Enrollment of the Volunteers of 1792 (1848-1851, Musée Départmental de l’Oise, Beauvais) and ultimately found in his Autumn (1848, The Wadsworth Atheneum). The previous year, 1847, had seen Couture establish himself as one of France’s most important and forward-thinking artists through the exhibition of his monumental canvas, Romains de la décadence (1847, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), a thinly veiled critique of French society and the decline of French culture under the July Monarchy.
At the time of the revolution of 1848, Couture was thus regarded as one of the country’s greatest artists, heir to his teacher Antoine Gros and Theodore Géricault. Given his popularity and sympathetic politics to the Second Empire, Couture was commissioned to paint a grand history painting for the Hall of Sessions of the National Assembly which would emphasize the relationship between the Revolution of 1789 and the Second Republic. The work was to express a unifying message of patriotism by highlighting the historical moment when, amid the turbulence of the Revolution, Frenchmen of many classes came together in defense of the Republic, then at war with Austria. Couture’s enthusiasm for the project is reflected in the sheer number of studies and compositional sketches that were made in preparation for the finished work.
The most complete preparatory sketch, and the one the artist identified as his preferred composition for the final painting is The Enrollment (1848, Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA). In the center of this version of the composition an allegorical figure of Liberty sits astride a cannon, and behind her, as if being protected, are the figures of two girls, referred to as ‘The Promises’ reflecting Couture’s optimism for the future. Given the quickly shifting climate of the political landscape in France at the time, which saw the Second Republic transformed into the Second Empire, the ultimate significance of Couture’s painting was lost, and the final composition was heavily reworked and in places unfinished, with the figures of both ‘the Promises’ and Liberty rather ominously removed from the painting.
Nevertheless, the figure and the pose for which Berthe sat are preserved in Couture’s Autumn, painted in the same year that The Enrollment of the Volunteers of 1792 was begun. Now crowned with a laurel wreath, as seen in the present study, she remains perhaps as a reflection of the optimism and revolutionary victory which Couture had felt in the autumn of 1848 when he conceived the figures of ‘The Promises’ and which was undone with the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency in December of that same year.
At the time of the revolution of 1848, Couture was thus regarded as one of the country’s greatest artists, heir to his teacher Antoine Gros and Theodore Géricault. Given his popularity and sympathetic politics to the Second Empire, Couture was commissioned to paint a grand history painting for the Hall of Sessions of the National Assembly which would emphasize the relationship between the Revolution of 1789 and the Second Republic. The work was to express a unifying message of patriotism by highlighting the historical moment when, amid the turbulence of the Revolution, Frenchmen of many classes came together in defense of the Republic, then at war with Austria. Couture’s enthusiasm for the project is reflected in the sheer number of studies and compositional sketches that were made in preparation for the finished work.
The most complete preparatory sketch, and the one the artist identified as his preferred composition for the final painting is The Enrollment (1848, Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA). In the center of this version of the composition an allegorical figure of Liberty sits astride a cannon, and behind her, as if being protected, are the figures of two girls, referred to as ‘The Promises’ reflecting Couture’s optimism for the future. Given the quickly shifting climate of the political landscape in France at the time, which saw the Second Republic transformed into the Second Empire, the ultimate significance of Couture’s painting was lost, and the final composition was heavily reworked and in places unfinished, with the figures of both ‘the Promises’ and Liberty rather ominously removed from the painting.
Nevertheless, the figure and the pose for which Berthe sat are preserved in Couture’s Autumn, painted in the same year that The Enrollment of the Volunteers of 1792 was begun. Now crowned with a laurel wreath, as seen in the present study, she remains perhaps as a reflection of the optimism and revolutionary victory which Couture had felt in the autumn of 1848 when he conceived the figures of ‘The Promises’ and which was undone with the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency in December of that same year.