Page 27 - Revolution Republique Empire Restauration

PIERRE-HENRI DE VALENCIENNES
Toulouse 1750 – 1819 Paris

Ruines antiques dans un paysage classique
Oil on panel: 41 x 56.5 cm (16.14 x 22.24 in)
Signed and dated, lower right: P.Valenciennes/ 1790

Painted in 1790, at the height ofValenciennes’ 1786, he began to paint similar paysages arcadiennes
career, this jewel-like panel which depicts a and continued to develop this genre throughout his
classical idyll of indistinct narrative, is entire career until his death in 1819. In terms of
characteristic of the artist’s taste for le atmosphere, quality of light, and the geometric
paysage absolument idéal, Greco-Italian styled land- rationalism of the landscape, the present panel
scapes peopled with classical figures. Inspired by recalls a small contemporary canvas, now in the in
the great tradition of seventeenth century land- the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Poitiers (Fig. 1).1
scape painting, artists incorporated classical ruins Another distinctive feature of this work, the figure
or capriccios peopled by togate figures or mytho- group of the draped matron, standing before the
logical groups, all set amidst dense trees and woman seated beside an amphora, is found in a pen
foliage, the scene often complemented by a soaring and ink sheet signed and dated 1791 in Le Havre.2
mountainous horizon in the background. Rather Another later, highly finished, pen and ink capriccio
than any actual evocation of classical history (1797-1798) in the collection of the Musée Cantini,
Valenciennes instead depicted intimate scenes of an Marseille, includes the swan-prowed boat. This
ancient ideal, made tangible by the vivid balance of appears to be the artist’s own variation on a
its landscape setting. Homeric craft recognisable from archaic vase paint-
ing, examples of which the artist could easily have
Valenciennes was acknowledged as one of the most encountered in Roman collections (Fig.2).
prolific and influential landscape painters working Valenciennes subsequently placed the same boat in
at the turn of the 18th Century. After a period of the centre of his late masterpiece in Toulouse The
study in Rome, upon his return to Paris around Eruption ofVesuvius (1813).3

1. Spoleto, Palazzo Racani Arroni, Pierre-Henri deValenciennes, 1750-1819, exhib. cat., 1996, cat. no. 64, illus.
2. Spoleto, op. cit., cat. no. 21 (disegni), illus.; and cat. no. 23 (disegni), illus.
3. Ibid, cat. no. 97, illus. One other possibility for Valenciennes use of this motif is that is was meant to be a signature pun.The region of Valenciennes
was reputed to have been nicknamed the ‘Val des Cygnes’, or ‘Valley of the Swans’ since the renaissance. See P. L Jacob, Manners, Custom and Dress During
the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period, Paris, 1876, p. 132.

27