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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 14, 2017 | Artcurial | Paris | Old Master & 19th Century Art | 539 | $****** - ****** | The ball of ardents |
paintings
130 x 162 cm (51.18 x 63.78 in)
Oil on canvas
Signed 'G Rochegrosse' lower right
Private Collection of South West France
Salon of 1889, Paris, No. 2311
The Time', April 30, 1889
'The Lantern', May 3, 1889
"The Salon", in 'La Vie Parisienne', May 4, 1889, p. 243 (mentions the painting as acquired by the Countess of Kersaint at the end of the Salon)
'The Reminder', May 5, 1889
Camille Le Senne, "Music and Theater at the Salon of 1889", in 'Le Ménestrel', May 26, 1889, p. 164
Armand Sylvestre, "The Salon of 1889", in 'La Grande Revue', III, No. 14, May 1889, p. 331
Olivier Merson, "The Salon of 1889", in 'Le Monde illustré', 1 June 1889, p. 363
"Fine Arts", in 'The Civil Engineering', June 1, 1889, p. 82
Paul Rouaix, "Le Salon", in 'La Revue de famille', June 1889, p. 158-159
'Salon Illustrated', Paris, 1889, repr. p. 144
Jean Valmy-Baysse, 'Georges Rochegrosse: his life, his work', Paris, 1910, repr.
'Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse: the glories of decadence', cat. exp. Moulins, 2013, p. 72-73, fig. 29
Oil on canvas (original canvas)
Signed 'G Rochegrosse' lower right
Canvas of the house Hardy Alan
The Bal des Ardents, oil on canvas, signed, by G. Rochegrosse
h: 130w: 162 cm
And yet ... Exposed to the Salon of 1889, our painting received repeated praise from the critics as evidenced by the important bibliography the year of this exhibition. The reason is undoubtedly the emotion generated by the scene represented and especially the raw and violent way with which is portrayed this particularly theatrical passage of the history of France.
In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, King Charles VI, who suffered from fleeting crises of madness, shared power with a regency council made up of his powerful uncles. On January 28, 1393, less than a year after his first crisis, the king participated with four close to a ball given in the royal hotel of Saint-Pol. To entertain the assembly they are disguised as savages and to perfect the verism of the disguise their clothes are covered with pitch and covered with hairs of tow, chains finally bind them to each other to dominate their characters "indomitable" of perfect wild . Only the king is not attached to this group of dancers. This is the reason for its survival since in its mad race, the group catches fire because of a torch approached too close to them: the cries of pain reason, an indescribable smell invades the room, the assembly is bewildered and terrified . The Duchess of Berry seizes the king and engulfs him in his great cloak, thus stifling the fire and saving the crown. Or rather save only half because from this day the king will definitely plunge into madness. The event is recounted with great precision by Jean Froissart but also the monk of Saint-Denis Michel Pintoin who writes that "four men are burned alive, while their genitals fall to the ground, generating a strong effusion of blood".
Visitors to the Salon were used to being imposed by Rochegrosse gigantic paintings retracing bloody and terrible passages in the history of civilizations as diverse as Babylon, the ancient Rome, the Merovingians ... It seems nevertheless to have crossed a course in violence in painting The ball of ardents. In La Grande Revue of May 1889, Armand Sylvestre commented on the work: "This torment multiplied in this appalled joy leaves the spirit in a very terrible impression.These fumes where pass the agonized, these flames heavy with blood are of a Such subjects are really in the realm of painting Before M. Rochegrosse, I would have liked to think that no.
How did Rochegrosse paint such a picture? The journey of the artist but also the historical context offer us the keys to answer this question.
From an intellectual and artistic background, Rochegrosse was a brilliant student of the famous Julian Academy, then of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1883, the Prix du Salon opened the doors of Italy to him, a journey that he completed with others in the different European capitals. Passionate about archeology and history, he evolves in this nineteenth century which is the great period of the teaching of this discipline. The volumes of Jules Michelet's Histoire de France condition any vision of the past for the generations born after the July Monarchy, and this until the second half of the 20th century. Michelet lays the foundations of the French national novel by glorifying the heroes of the kingdom become a nation. The biases and the sometimes criticized approximations are little compared to the effectiveness of the national narrative. Rochegrosse, like all the generation of historical painters born after 1850, is naturally infused with this "heroic" vision.
By its extraordinary dynamism in the narration and the concern for an "archaeological" description in the clothing and decorative details, our painting is a masterpiece of its kind. Terrible in the nature of the scene represented, it is no less so because of the tragedy that is coming because of the king's madness: an invasion by English of which only Joan of Arc will be able to liberate the kingdom.
1. A. Sylvestre, "The Salon of 1889", in The Great Review, III, No. 14, May 1889, p. 331
