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| Artist: Seurat, Georges-Pierre 1 of 2 |  Previous | Next  |
| Angelica at the Rock (After Ingres), 1878 Georges-Pierre Seurat French, 1859-1891 Oil on canvas 32-5/8 x 26-1/8 in. (83 x 66.3 cm) Norton Simon Art Foundation, Gift of Jennifer Jones Simon M.1997.1.4.P © 2012 Norton Simon Art Foundation Not on view Seurat was a great admirer of Ingres, and as a student, he copied his work on a number of occasions. This attraction might at first seem odd, coming from the founder of the French Neo-Impressionist art movement. Nevertheless, Seurat’s student days were defined by the academic structure of the prestigious and traditional École des Beaux-Arts. Seurat painted this work after the original in the Louvre when he was about 18 years old. Clearly, the complicated, sinuous forms of Angelica attracted him, as he focused solely on her form, to the exclusion of other elements in the original. In this way, Seurat used the figure to study tone, modeling and volume. Historian Robert L. Herbert suggested yet another purpose for this study: “[F]rom Ingres Seurat learned a clear and chastened outline which eliminates the details of individual muscles, reducing natural form to highly idealized linear curves.” The subject is taken from Ariosto’s epic 1516 poem, Orlando Furioso (Canto 10). Ruggiero, riding a hippogriff (a mythological half-horse, half-griffin), rescues Angelica from a sea monster. This painting is a later, smaller version of one that Ingres completed for Louis XVIII in 1819, now in the Louvre. View Provenance |
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