Lot 2274 D α

There could be no doubt that Paris was the undisputed artistic metropolis of Europe in the mid-19th century. Any art student from a foreign country, especially from the German provinces, must have been overwhelmed by the wealth of art the city offered him. It is therefore not surprising that Anselm Feuerbach regarded his stay there from 1851 to 1853 (with interruptions) as decisive for his artistic development, after stations in Düsseldorf, Munich and Antwerp: "Paris has become the turning point of my artistic life, the foundation of my artistic education." With these words he was later to recall his stay on the Seine. He studied in Thomas Couture's studio, met the young Edouard Manet and Gustave Courbet, became fascinated by the work of Eugène Delacroix and studied the old masters, the works of Rubens, Titian, Giorgione, and Poussin in the Louvre. He financed his stay in Paris with portrait commissions, which his mother got for him in his native Baden. However, he aspired to something greater, the grande peinture; his stay in Paris was to lead him "from academic stencil composition to great perception and conception". Feuerbach's self-portrait (fig. 1), filled with self-confidence and a thirst for action, is a testimony to the artistic aspirations ignited in Paris, as is the present compositional study "The Triumph of Bacchus", which, like the self-portrait, was painted in the city around 1852/1853.
The composition shows a bacchanalia in a landscape, with Bacchus reclining on the left, backed by a red cloth and flanked by piles of fruit. At the feet of the god of wine lie male and female figures, partly naked, partly half-dressed. They are asleep in intoxication or just waking up, picking fruit from the trees or pouring themselves wine. Two dark figures, perhaps satyrs, sneak out of the bushes to gawk at the naked woman lying in the centre. The complex composition, the dramatic pictorial light, the balanced yet powerful colouring, but also the design of each individual figure is the product of Feuerbach's studies in Paris, his preoccupation with the old and new masters as well as classical antiquity. In this painting, Feuerbach incorporates the tradition of the bacchanalia, which goes back through Nicolas Poussin to Titian (fig. 2), as well as the sculpture of antiquity, such as the Dying Gaul or the Vatican Ariadne. The new masters were no less important for Feuerbach: his teacher Thomas Couture offered a model for the depiction of an intoxicated celebration with his monumental painting „The Romans of Decadence“ (1847) which Feuerbach copied (ill. 3), Delacroix's colourism taught him to use powerful tones such as the bright red used to mark Bacchus as the protagonist of this scene. The Triumph of Bacchus is a parforce ride through the history of Western art, all that Feuerbach allowed himself to be overwhelmed by in Paris.
Feuerbach had already dealt with the theme of the bacchanalia in his Düsseldorf period (Ecker, op. cit., nos. 29, 30). The comparison between these early attempts and the "Triumph of Bacchus" is striking and shows the artistic maturity Feuerbach attained in Paris. The stay was important not only because he was able to study the greatest works of the old and new masters. In their presence, he developed a new understanding of art and a new self-image as an artist - the "great contemplation and conception" of which Feuerbach speaks finds expression in this "Triumph of Bacchus" from his time in Paris.