This picture, “Salome” (sa-lo´-mee), is the masterpiece of a French artist of great promise who was killed in battle at the close of the Franco-Prussian War. Born at Paris, October 30, 1843, Henri Regnault (rane-yoe) was brought up in surroundings where the best of taste reigned, his father being connected with the porcelain establishment at Sèvres (sayvr). He early showed artistic promise, and after three trials carried off the Prix de Rome at the age of twenty-three. The income from this prize, together with the additional funds which his family provided, enabled him to travel in Spain and Morocco after he had finished his novitiate at Rome. He had been drawn to the study of oriental color through having come under the influence of Fortuny’s work while at Rome, an influence which affected all of his later pictures.
His love of color is well shown in the “Salome.” The model was an Italian gypsy girl of the Campagna (cam-pan-yuh), and it was not until the picture was well advanced that this title was given to it. It is hardly as a characterization of the light-footed daughter of Herodias that the painting charms, though the naming was apt. Its attraction lies in the marvelous harmony of yellows, and in its daring reversal of the Rembrandt method. Rembrandt surrounded his light with shadow—here there is the shining black of the touseled head in the midst of gleaming silk and radiant spangles.
Everything superfluous has been eliminated. What detail there is,—the chest, the salver, the rug, is all in keeping with the design as a whole. No description can do justice to the handling of the textiles, or suggest the accuracy of their values. The marvel of it is how so many tones of yellow could be heaped one upon the other without wearying the eye.
Regnault’s death was deeply mourned by his fellow-artists. He was exempt from military duty because of having won the Prix de Rome, but at the outbreak of the war he insisted that he was needed, and enlisted as a private in the 60th Battalion. When urged to accept a commission he replied, “I cannot allow you to make of a good soldier an inferior officer.” Just a few days before the capitulation of Paris, he was killed in a sortie at Buzenval, January 19, 1871.
Two of his pictures, a portrait of General Prim and the “Execution without Judgment under the Caliphs,” are in the Louvre. One of his finest canvases, “Automedon with the Horses of Achilles,” is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A study for the Boston picture is in a private gallery in Philadelphia.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 9. SERIAL No. 157
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
IN THE FLETCHER COLLECTION, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK
