Allegories of the Seasons by Louis de Boullogne II

 

 

These two oil-on-canvas paintings, of identical dimensions, form a pair and were both painted by Louis de Boullogne II in 1707. These allegories have been interpreted as representing the seasons because of the figures depicted. Bacchus is thus generally associated with Autumn, and Vertumnus – depicted as an elderly woman – with Winter. They may also form part of a wider series on the amorous affairs of the gods. Two other versions of Vertumnus and Pomona, presented as autographs, were sold at Sotheby’s New York on 8 January 1981 and at Art Curial on 9 June 2021. Another is held at the Musée des Ursulines in Mâcon. A copy of these paintings was produced as early as 1709 by Pierre Paul Mérelle for the gallery at the Château de Guermantes.

 

Whilst Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun tended to promote a classical style based on restraint, Louis de Boullogne II was still heavily influenced by Italian art, particularly Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, which he had studied during his years in Rome. The chests of the two young women are thus generously illuminated, whilst the rest of the composition is plunged into darkness. Louis de Boullogne II belongs to a generation of painters—such as Charles de La Fosse, Jean Jouvenet and Antoine Coypel—whose works exemplify the prevailing taste of the early^18th century, characterised by a pictorial unity based on colour. This primacy of colour was the subject of a lengthy debate within the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, known as ‘the debate between the Poussinists and the Rubénists’, and was ultimately settled in favour of the Rubénists.

 

Louis, brother of Bon Boullogne (1649–1717) and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1673, was one of the leading painters of the Classical period. Appointed First Painter to the King in 1724, he was well versed in ambitious compositions, contributing to most of the King’s major projects: the Small Apartments at Versailles, the Marble Trianon, Marly, Meudon, Les Invalides… He won the famous Prix de Rome, spent time in Italy from 1675 to 1680, and then returned to Paris. Admitted as a member of the Royal Academy of Painting, he became a professor there (1694) and subsequently director of the Academy, a post he held until his death. His main concern was to restore drawing from the live model to the heart of artists’ training, rather than copying from other artists’ drawings, in accordance with the precepts of the Carracci school in Bologna. The portrait of him by Pierre Gobert clearly illustrates this fundamental commitment to a return to the observation of nature.

 

His devotion to drawing from life is evident in the two drawings of women (Paris, Musée du Louvre), which bear numerous similarities to the figure of Ariadne, languishing on a rock, whose flesh appears to quiver. This concern for naturalism is complemented by a lively and free use of line when the artist sketches out a composition, as demonstrated by a drawing held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, which serves as a preparatory study for *Ariadne and Bacchus*.

 

 

 

Hélène Guicharnaud and Antoine Schnapper, Louis de Boullogne: 1654–1733, Paris, 1985.