The Lunatic of Étretat
Artist
Hugues Merle
(French, 1823 - 1881)
CultureFrench
Date1871
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions60 1/8 × 39 1/8 in. (152.7 × 99.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 73 × 52 × 5 3/4 in. (185.4 × 132.1 × 14.6 cm)
Overall, Frame: 73 × 52 × 5 3/4 in. (185.4 × 132.1 × 14.6 cm)
SignedSigned and dated lower right: ‘Hugues-Merle / Etretat / 1871'
MarkingsLabels:
Jack Kilgore Gallery, NY
Old paper label: style d'or +slip02 150X 47 ½" toile
Canvas stamp: Hardy Alan, Paris
Stencil on stretchers: 5168
Tag: Lopez Frames NY
Credit LineMuseum purchase with additional funds from Landmark Communications
Object number2009.13
Not 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.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? ProvenancePrivate 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.Exhibition History"Art that Asks the Big Questions," Tidewater Community College Visual Arts Center, Portsmouth, VA, July 9 - November 5, 2013.Published ReferencesEric M. Zafran, "Norfolk's Salon Masterworks Shine Again," _Fine Art Connoisseur_, November-December 2014, 50.
