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Lot Essay
This monumental late masterpiece by Gustave Moreau was lost to scholarship between its exhibition in 1906 and its reappearance in Spoleto in 1992. The painting was commissioned by Moreau's patron, the great collector, Antoine Roux, who wrote to the artist in December 1891: "I have organized all my paintings -- the Jason...is a marvel."
Unlike the first version of the painting of the subject that he executed in 1865 (Paris, Musée d'Orsay, fig. 1) in which the influence of the classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is quite obvious -- notably in the careful attention to line and detail -- the emphasis of this painting is on colour. With its thick impasto and overall vibrancy, the myriad and literally trancribed symbols of the earlier work are subsumed into a quintessentially Symbolist hommage to heroic youth and love. Jason's lover Medea has been replaced by the young Eros, and the painting pulses with life, colour and movement in a way that is quite different to the more disparate assembly of carefully crafted motifs that make up the earlier rendition of this subject.
Of the present work Pierre Mathieu writes: "In 1865, Moreau exhibited Jason (Paris, Musée d'Orsay - fig 1) at the Salon, depicting the hero standing triumphant at the bottom of a mast, carrying the Golden Fleece. His lover, the magician Medea, whose poison had helped him to kill the monster guarding the fabulous trophy, leans over his shoulder.
Twenty years later, in several works dating from 1885 to 1897, Moreau once again took up the theme of Jason, the personification of intrepid youth. A large unfinished canvas held by the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris shows him standing on the Argonauts' ship upon his return from his victorious quest.
At the heart of a narrow, wooded valley the almost naked figure of Jason brandishes the ram's head in his right hand. The bloody corpse of the dragon, from whom he seized his trophy, lies at the bottom of the altar on which the Golden Fleece was originally placed. The hero, whose adonis-like physique draws upon Donatello's David, carries on his left arm a haloed putto representing Eros, the god of love, thanks to whom Jason managed to acquire the Fleece. As is usual in Moreau's later works, the texture of the glistening paint surface is thick and highly wrought. Two small harpies, symbolising lurking death, flutter on the right-hand side.
Typically, the artist has created a highly personal mythology, filled with mysterious and enigmatic fantasies which would later appeal to the Surrealists, not least André Breton and Salvador Dalí. At the end of his life, Moreau commented on this picture: "The young hero, carrying the infant god on his arm -- a red-winged cupid -- triumphantly brandishes the sacred trophy. At his feet, the dying dragon still seems to threaten the new victor, who radiates youth, heroism and love. November 1897." (quoted in P.-L. Mathieu, L'assembleur de rêves, op. cit.). In 1900, Ary Renan, Moreau's first biographer and close friend, classed Jason and Love among the paintings from the end of his career that had been "conceived in a sort of magical intoxication..."
The ornate frame on this painting is original to the work. It was commissioned directly by Moreau from the Paris frame-maker Marchand, a regular supplier to both the artist and to Roux.
Unlike the first version of the painting of the subject that he executed in 1865 (Paris, Musée d'Orsay, fig. 1) in which the influence of the classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is quite obvious -- notably in the careful attention to line and detail -- the emphasis of this painting is on colour. With its thick impasto and overall vibrancy, the myriad and literally trancribed symbols of the earlier work are subsumed into a quintessentially Symbolist hommage to heroic youth and love. Jason's lover Medea has been replaced by the young Eros, and the painting pulses with life, colour and movement in a way that is quite different to the more disparate assembly of carefully crafted motifs that make up the earlier rendition of this subject.
Of the present work Pierre Mathieu writes: "In 1865, Moreau exhibited Jason (Paris, Musée d'Orsay - fig 1) at the Salon, depicting the hero standing triumphant at the bottom of a mast, carrying the Golden Fleece. His lover, the magician Medea, whose poison had helped him to kill the monster guarding the fabulous trophy, leans over his shoulder.
Twenty years later, in several works dating from 1885 to 1897, Moreau once again took up the theme of Jason, the personification of intrepid youth. A large unfinished canvas held by the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris shows him standing on the Argonauts' ship upon his return from his victorious quest.
At the heart of a narrow, wooded valley the almost naked figure of Jason brandishes the ram's head in his right hand. The bloody corpse of the dragon, from whom he seized his trophy, lies at the bottom of the altar on which the Golden Fleece was originally placed. The hero, whose adonis-like physique draws upon Donatello's David, carries on his left arm a haloed putto representing Eros, the god of love, thanks to whom Jason managed to acquire the Fleece. As is usual in Moreau's later works, the texture of the glistening paint surface is thick and highly wrought. Two small harpies, symbolising lurking death, flutter on the right-hand side.
Typically, the artist has created a highly personal mythology, filled with mysterious and enigmatic fantasies which would later appeal to the Surrealists, not least André Breton and Salvador Dalí. At the end of his life, Moreau commented on this picture: "The young hero, carrying the infant god on his arm -- a red-winged cupid -- triumphantly brandishes the sacred trophy. At his feet, the dying dragon still seems to threaten the new victor, who radiates youth, heroism and love. November 1897." (quoted in P.-L. Mathieu, L'assembleur de rêves, op. cit.). In 1900, Ary Renan, Moreau's first biographer and close friend, classed Jason and Love among the paintings from the end of his career that had been "conceived in a sort of magical intoxication..."
The ornate frame on this painting is original to the work. It was commissioned directly by Moreau from the Paris frame-maker Marchand, a regular supplier to both the artist and to Roux.