Henri PICOU (1824-1895) - Lot 69

Lot n° 69
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15000 - 20000 EUR
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Result : 23 000EUR
Henri PICOU (1824-1895) - Lot 69
Henri PICOU (1824-1895) The Widow of Malabar. Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. 91 x 141 cm. Lining, small repaints in the sky, age-related microepidermations and micro-craquelures. Provenance: Property of M. Adryan de Wezele, 1877. Jean-Pierre Changeux Collection, late 1970s. Acquired from the previous owner by the family of the current owners, circa 1980. Exhibition: Paris Salon of 1877 La Veuve de Malabar, ou l'Empire des coutumes, an 18th-century opera. Henri Picou's painting was inspired for its theme by Antoine-Marie Lemierre's tragedy of the same name, first performed in 1770 at the Comédie-Française. Lemierre's main source of inspiration appears to have been Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs, which evokes the sacrifice of princely widows in India following the death of their husbands. An apostle of philosophical modernity, Voltaire mercilessly condemned this practice, denouncing the despotic power and fanaticism of priests. An opera-bouffe of the same title premiered at the Variétés in Paris in 1873, four years before our painting. Henri Picou's La Veuve de Malabar (1877). In front of a temple forecourt, the Raja's funeral pyre is lit, about to ignite the remains, while his widow writhes in fear and revolt in odalisque choreography. The high priest of Brahma, who presides over the ceremony, invokes the statue of the god that dominates the scene, while the court servants watch the religious holocaust, sometimes passively, sometimes in revolt or despair. Picou treats the scene like a sumptuous, dramatic choreography, in gemstone colors: corundum reds, emerald greens, turquoise sea backdrops. The composition is directly inspired by Delacroix's Death of Sardanapale. The exotic excess, theatrical tone and luminous execution are indebted to the Orientalism movement of the Salons. The Orient was then the realm of the picturesque and the marvelous. Henri Picou had already tackled the Indian repertoire the previous year in an extraordinary composition entitled "Jeu d'échec indien": a Raja, seated on the princely throne in the audience hall, moves the pawns of a giant game, the latter on their square being merely the guards, odalisques and servants of his palace.
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