Vincent

Oil on canvas
.

52 x 65 cm (20 ½ x 25 ¾ in.)

PROVENANCE: Possibly the collection of the painter Charles Meynier and identifiable in his posthumous sale, Paris, 20 rue des Fossés-Monsieur-Leprince, 16 November-4 December 1832, as lot 104: Vincent. Guillaume Tell repoussant la barque que [sic] porte le gouverneur: belle composition, pleine de verve et d’effet; Private collection.

The son of François-Élie Vincent (1708-1790), a miniaturist of Genevan origin, François-André was born in Paris in 1746. Trained initially by his father, he entered the Académie royale and rapidly became the pupil of Joseph-Marie Vien, the ‘rénovateur de l’école française’. He was awarded first prize by the Academy in 1768 for his Germanicus calming the Revolt in his Camp (École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris) and set out for Rome in 1771 where he remained for four years, drawing copiously – he left an astonishing set of caricatures of his fellow pupils at the Palazzo Mancini, then the Academy’s residence. During 1773 and 1774 he spent a great deal of time in the company of Fragonard and Bergeret de Grancourt, travelling with them as far as Naples. Having returned to Paris in 1755, in 1777 Vincent was approved at the Academy; he exhibited in the Salon for the first time that same year with a group of fifteen paintings which included Belisarius reduced to Begging, Alcibiades receiving the lessons of Socrates (both in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier) and the Portrait of Bergeret (Musée d’art et d’histoire, Besançon). He continued to participate regularly in the Salon until the turn of the century, presenting portraits and history paintings, both antique and modern, such as: President Molé and the Insurgents (1779, Palais Bourbon, Paris), The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1781, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers), The Abduction of Orithya (1781- 82, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes), which was his ‘morceau de réception’ making him a full academician, Augustus and Cinna (1787, Zidlochovice castle, Czech Republic), Zeuxis Choosing his Models (1789, Musée du Louvre), the Leçon d’agriculture (the Ploughing Lesson, 1798, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux), or Melancholy (1801, Chateau de Malmaison). Two large religious compositions, The Healing of the Blind Man and The Paralytic Cured by the Pool (the Salons of 1779 and 1783) are both still in the church of the Madeleine at Rouen. Professor to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture since 1792, his studio became one of the most important in Paris and, along with Regnault’s, the only rivals to that of David. He taught generations of pupils, from Charles Meynier to Horace Vernet. After 1801, he began to paint less. His fragile health slowed down his work and he could not properly complete the ambitious painting of the Battle of the Pyramids commissioned by the Minister of the Interior in 1800 (now lost). At this point, he dedicated himself mostly to teaching. On his death in 1816, the entire cohort of painters registered as pensioners at the French Academy in Rome were his former pupils. One of the most important artists of the last quarter of the 18th century, a brilliant and protean draughtsman, Vincent was one of the forerunners in the revival of the Antique (his Belisarius is earlier than David’s by several years) and in his taste for subjects from modern history, such as the series illustrating The Life of Henry IV, (1783-87, Paris, Musée du Louvre and the Musée national du Château, Fontainebleau). It is in this domaine perhaps that he was most original, leading the way, along with Durameau, Brenet and Ménageot, in what became a highly important branch of French art of the 19th century. A founding member of the Institut de France which in 1795 replaced the Académie royale and then a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts after the Restoration, chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, and professor of drawing at the Ecole polytechnique, Vincent was one of the most celebrated artists of his time.

At the end of the Salon of 1791, the first Salon ‘libre’ – open to all – the decision was taken to subsidise those rather numerous artists who lacked commissions and were in grave material need. By decree the Assemblée nationale set up an annual fund ‘for the encouragement of artists’. Thus Vincent received a sum of 5,000 livres. These subsidies enabled him to undertake the William Tell and Gessler, an immense picture (325.5 x 423.5 cm.) which would only be presented at the Salon three years later in 1795, and which is now in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse (fig.1)1. Being himself of Genevan origin, this was for him a patriotic picture, illustrating an episode from the life of the hero William Tell. Symbol of Swiss resistance to the Austrian occupation, this more or less legendary figure was of particular resonance in France during the years of the Revolution. As Jean- Pierre Cuzin notes: ‘it came naturally to Vincent, being of Genevan origin, to see William Tell as a hero of national independence, and indeed he became for the Jacobins, together with Brutus, an often represented Republican hero’.2

The subject is taken from the tragedy by Antoine-Marin Lemierre (1733-1793), Guillaume Tell, written in 1766 and often staged during the Revolution. For having refused to bow to the hat of Gessler, bailiff to the Austrian emperor, which he had hung on a pole in the main square of the village, William Tell was ordered to fire an arrow at an apple placed on his son’s head. He was successful in this exploit but the bailiff noticed that Tell had concealed a second arrow, intended for killing Gessler himself, if the son had died. Tell was placed in chains and put in a boat with his companion Mechtal heading for a fortress on the other shore of the Lake of Lucerne when a storm blew up. Only Tell was capable of controlling the boat and was therefore freed from his chains, but as he got closer to the bank, he jumped ashore with Mechtal and pushed back the boat into the turbulent waters. Gessler, having also survived the waves, tried to reach the fortress but was killed in the mountains by our hero. In the play by Lemierre, the account of this episode is given to William Tell’s wife by Arnold de Mechtal (act V, scene III) and Vincent cited four verses from this scene in his text for the livret of the 1795 Salon.

The precise date in which Vincent decided on this subject and began work is unknown but the discovery of the present sketch sheds new light on the stages of its development. Given the importance of the project, a great number of preparatory works must have existed, distilled over some years, both for the whole composition and for details, but until now, the known preparation for this large Salon painting consisted only of a drawing for the figure of William Tell (private collection)3 and two oil sketches, a small study for the detail of Gessler upturned in the boat with his henchmen (fig.2: Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)4 and a sketch for the entire composition (fig.3; Musée municipal, Guéret, 65 x 77.5 cm.)5. Another drawing can be added, since lost, but mentioned in the Grünling sale, in Vienna in 1823 as well as a further ‘étude’ a half-length oil study of William Tell also lost, but mentioned in the inventory made after the death of Vincent in 18166.

Unpublished, the present sketch is particularly interesting because it sheds further light on the huge labour that this project meant for Vincent. Immediately apparent are the light tones and the elongated forms of the figures, which are closer in style to the works executed in preparation for the Leçon d’agriculture (the Ploughing Lesson) exhibited at the Salon in 1798 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux)7 than to either the finished picture of William Tell and Gessler in Toulouse or the sketch in Guéret. Excluding the idea that it could be a later repeated treatment of the subject with numerous differences (as Vincent on occasion did with other subjects) it seems clear, as confirmed by Jean-Pierre Cuzin, that stylistically this canvas precedes the other known connected works and testifies to an earlier beginning to the project than was previously understood. The composition is already in place, following a diagonal which is maintained as the principal axis of the large canvas, and the same figures are present but in different positions; in particular, Gessler does not fall backwards, he is still solid on his feet and posed to lunge at William Tell, his sword raised. The scene from the tale is in fact not exactly the one adopted for the final composition but rather the one just before.

William Tell already wears the yellow and red costume which is traditionally attributed to him, although he is dressed simply, wearing a hose with slashes at the knees and an unlaced doublet over a white shirt. In the final painting the hero wears a much more formal costume with a red coat over his hose, held by a blue belt; in the sketch he is already wearing a red beret but Vincent hesitated over the colour of the feather: blue here, yellow in the sketch in Guéret and white in the final picture. Above all it is his position which completely changes: here he faces the boat, holds his bow and arrows in his left hand and raises his right arm against his enemy. In the Salon painting, Tell, bearded and looking older, is depicted in contrapposto as if in response to the fury of the elements, in a composition altogether more turbulent; he seizes his weapon – the bow has become the legendary crossbow – in his right hand and balances himself by pushing against the rocks with his left hand in order to upturn the boat. While the figure of Mechtal has changed little, except for the colour of his clothes and the absence of the beret, that of Gessler has undergone a greater modification, losing his balance as the boat sinks. The colours of his costume remain the same as in the sketch, a red hose, breeches and doublet with blue and red, but the red cape has been replaced with a long belted tunic and a short coat trimmed with fur, to emphasise the tyrant’s extravagance. The costumes are not those of the Tell’s epoch but rather of the beginning of the Renaissance. In September 1794, while still at work on the William Tell, Vincent executed a series of watercolours of costumes copied from the Gobelins tapestries, the Mois Lucas, certain details of which might have inspired him early on in the project (fig.4)8.

The landscape in the present sketch is a backdrop less elaborate than in the final work, for which Vincent surely looked at known depictions of the lake of Lucerne, transforming it into a wild and highly dramatic scene. Only the left part is already blocked in with mountains and what will become a storm-filled sky crossed with lightning bolts is here a blue sky with clouds amassing. But the ‘flattened rock’ which rises from the waves in the foreground, as described by Lemierre, is left out of the sketch in Guéret but reappears in the final picture, attached to the rocky shore. The artist also added to the broken mast a sail which has torn loose and flaps in the wind. The variants between the three known compositions are too numerous to be described in detail but above all the essential difference between the present sketch and the other known depictions is that it shows a stage in the realization of the project in which Vincent has not yet decided to present it as a night scene, a transition which emphasised the contrasts between light and shade and eventually gave the work a phantasmagoric slant. That this was not Vincent’s idea at the beginning is revealed by the discovery of this splendid preparatory work.

Notes:

1. J.-P. Cuzin, with I. Mayer-Michalon, François-André Vincent 1746-1816, entre Fragonard et David, Paris 2013, p.196-199 and 534 P, 476-477 illus. 


2. Op. cit., p.198 and E. C. Mansfield, The Perfect Foil, François- André Vincent and the Revolution in French Painting, Minneapolis, 2012, pp.173-185. 


3. J.-P. Cuzin, op. cit., 530 D, p.196, illus. and p.476. 


4. Op. cit., 2013, 531 P, p.476, illus. 


5. Op. cit., 2013, 533 P, p.196-197, illus. and p.476. The only 
sketch for the entire composition known to this date, this study had been identified as that mentioned in Meynier’s posthumous sale of 1832 (voir I. Mayer-Michalon, Charles Meynier (1763-1832), Paris, Arthena, 2008, p. 288). In fact, the present sketch may well be that in Meynier’s collection. 


6. Op. cit., 2013, *529 D and *532 P, p.476. 


7. Op. cit., 2013, 533 P, p.214-219, illus. 


8. Op. cit., 2013, 521 D to 523 D, p.195 and 474, illus.