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The Lunatic of Étretat
Artist:
Hugues Merle
(French, 1823 - 1881)
Date: 1871
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
60 1/8 x 39 1/8 in. (152.7 x 99.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 73 x 52 x 6 in. (185.4 x 132.1 x 15.2 cm)
Classification: European art
Credit Line: Museum purchase with additional funds from Landmark Communications
Object number: 2009.13
In Collection(s)
On view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting of a barefoot, unkempt female figure clutching a log as if it were a baby and seated beside a well.
Exhibition History"Art that Asks the Big Questions," Tidewater Community College Visual Arts Center, Portsmouth, VA, July 9 - November 5, 2013.
Label textfar left
Léon-Jean-Bazile Perrault
French, 1832–1908
The Orphans, 1888
Oil on canvas
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2062
Hugues Merle
French, 1823–1881
The Lunatic of Étretat, 1871
Oil on canvas
Museum purchase with additional funds from Landmark Communications 2009.13
Compare these two paintings. Léon-Bazile Perrault’s seductive image of a beggar-girl holding a baby (at far left) continues a tradition of 19th-century realist art that stresses the plight of the poor and dispossessed. Hugues Merle mines the same tradition (seen here), yet he transforms the sentimental image into one of utter, even hysterical, despair. The woman’s face is a mask of suffering while she cradles, not a sleeping baby, but a wooden log! Is Merle’s “lunatic” mourning the loss of a child, or mad with longing for one? With no clear answer visible, we are left to ponder her fate.
The figure’s anguish is a hallmark of Romanticism, a style that emphasized images of suffering, madness, and death. These images were often thinly veiled allusions to broader social suffering or political upheavals. For example, Merle painted The Lunatic in 1871, the same year that France lost the Franco-Prussian War. Could his dark image mirror the broader national mood of political loss and desolation?
Léon-Jean-Bazile Perrault
French, 1832–1908
The Orphans, 1888
Oil on canvas
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2062
Hugues Merle
French, 1823–1881
The Lunatic of Étretat, 1871
Oil on canvas
Museum purchase with additional funds from Landmark Communications 2009.13
Compare these two paintings. Léon-Bazile Perrault’s seductive image of a beggar-girl holding a baby (at far left) continues a tradition of 19th-century realist art that stresses the plight of the poor and dispossessed. Hugues Merle mines the same tradition (seen here), yet he transforms the sentimental image into one of utter, even hysterical, despair. The woman’s face is a mask of suffering while she cradles, not a sleeping baby, but a wooden log! Is Merle’s “lunatic” mourning the loss of a child, or mad with longing for one? With no clear answer visible, we are left to ponder her fate.
The figure’s anguish is a hallmark of Romanticism, a style that emphasized images of suffering, madness, and death. These images were often thinly veiled allusions to broader social suffering or political upheavals. For example, Merle painted The Lunatic in 1871, the same year that France lost the Franco-Prussian War. Could his dark image mirror the broader national mood of political loss and desolation?
Published References
Eric M. Zafran, "Norfolk's Salon Masterworks Shine Again," _Fine Art Connoisseur_, November-December 2014, 50.
Provenance
Private collection, Belgium; Auction, Horta, Hôtel de Ventes - Auctioneers, Brussels, Belgium, May 16-18, 2008, no. 193; Jack Kilgore & Co., New York, NY, 2008; Museum purchase, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., 2009.