Jean-Antoine Watteau – Satyr Pouring Wine

A very interesting drawing of a Satyr by a Rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau.

Jean-Antoine Watteau, Satyr Pouring Wine, 1717, Black, red, and white chalk

Awhile ago I stumbled upon this interesting drawing of a Satyr pouring wine. It looks sketchy and unfinished, but the male nude is certainly striking and a bit mysterious. Robust body captured in the movement, pouring wine but the wineskins in his hands are left undefined. Some parts of the body are very detailed and precise, such as the torso and the shoulders with generous strokes of black and some red on the hands, while other parts like legs just simply vanish. And notice the playful swirls of black for the hair. The face expression looks focused, the gaze intense, looking downwards. It looks swift and energetic, the artist really had a hard job capturing that satyr pouring the wine before the action was completed and the satyr wandered off not wishing to be the star of the canvas. Being fond of Satyrs, Fauns and other wild creatures from Greek and Roman mythology, I was instantly taken by this drawing. What a robust male nude, what a determination in the drawing, especially considering the limited colours.

I was quite surprised to learn that the author of this drawing was none other that Watteau. I usually connected Watteau with more delicate, gentle and dreamy works of art; paintings where refined, elegant couples spend idle hours in the forest, a world of silk dresses and celebrations of love, a world where a pale melancholy Pierrot dressed in an oversize clothes is the true tragical hero… I don’t see how a drawing of a nude Satyr would fit into this elegant world laced with sweet sadness that Watteau had created in his short life but I guess I know nothing of Watteau’s imagination! In Greek mythology Satyrs were presented as wild creatures of the forest with mane-like hair, faces like beasts, and similar to Faun, they love to indulge in drinking wine, dancing, chasing local beauties, most often unsuccessfully. In my humble opinion, Watteau could have added a few more touched to this mane-like hair, make it look more like Jim Morrison’s hairstyle, but that’s just my opinion. In this drawing Watteau used his beloved trois crayon technique (“three chalks”) using three colours; red, black and white chalk on paper. But it isn’t really three colours but four, because there is the colour of the paper which in this case perfectly matches the skin tone of the Satyr. This study is connected to the lost painting “Autumn” which was part of the cycle commissioned by the banker Pierre Crozat.

Circle of Watteau, Head of a Satyr, no date, Black and red chalk, heightened with yellow chalk with traces of white chalk on brown paper

William Orpen – The Mirror: Why live in the world when you can live in your head?

William Orpen, The Mirror, 1900

This painting keeps haunting me. I don’t quite know why because it’s a really simple portrait, nothing special about it at first sight. I discovered it months ago, and it just lingers in my memory. Every once in a while I remember it and then I gaze it for some time. Then I forget it, and a week passes and then I remember it again and it’s a never ending cycle. The space in the painting isn’t cluttered with many things that tire our eyes. The colours are neutral, greys, black and olive green, nothing overwhelming. The simple arrangement of objects in a painting, with a chest of drawers, a round mirror on the wall and a girl sitting on a chair makes for a simple composition. It also makes it look as if the painter didn’t just capture the space as it was, although it is accurate, but rather chose the objects to make the painting look aesthetically appealing. William Orpen, an Irish painter, was very young when he painted “The Mirror”, just twenty-two years old. He had just recently finished his schooling at the Slate School of Art in London (he studied there from 1897 to 1899), and with this painting he was paying homage to Whistler’s famous “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2” or simply A Portrait of the Artist’s Mother painted in 1871. The round mirror on the wall which shows the artist painting is an obvious reference to “The Arnolfini Portrait” painted by Jan van Eyck. But Emily seems to belong to an entirely different world to the one where Orpen is painting. As if the space around her is disappearing and she remains alone on the stage of her life, hiding from us with that hat.

“The Mirror” was painted in Orpen’s lodgings and the model was a girl called Emily Scobel who modeled at the Slade School and was at the time engaged to Orpen, but broke off the engagement the following year and eventually married someone else. She was the main model for Orpen’s early works. With the simple composition and sombre colours, Orpen put a focus on Emily’s face because that’s where the real drama takes place. Her face is very captivating to me and it seems to say so much. Half hidden in the shade of her lovely hat, the same hat you can see in a drawing of Emily that Orpen made in 1901, her eyes are full of doubt and slight disappointment; I feel like she’s come to the point where she doesn’t know what to do with her life and she’s staring into the grey future with worrying eyes that seem to say: and what now? Her shoulders are sloping and her hands are clasped in her laps. She is sitting there in her long black skirt and white blouse, but her thoughts are somewhere else. Cheeks of her round face are pink as roses, but her lips pressed together are hiding secrets that she is hesitant to tell us. When I look at her face, and I have gazed at it for quite some time on different occasions, the lyrics to the Pulp’s song “Monday Morning” comes to mind:

There’s nothing to do so you just stay in bed,

Oh poor thing,

Why live in the world when you can live in your head?

 

Mmm when you can go out late from Monday,

Till Saturday turns into Sunday,

And now you’re back here at Monday,

So we can do it all over again.

And you go aah ah ah

I want a refund,

I want a light,

I want a reason,

To make it through the night, alright.

 

And so you finally left school,

So now what are you going to do?

Now you’re so grown up,

Yeah you’re oh oh oh oh oh so mature oh.

William Orpen, A Study – Emily Scobel, 1901, red chalk, graphite and grey wash

This interesting red chalk study of Emily was used to illustrate an article written about Orpen in August 1901 in a magazine called “The Artist”. Not much is known about Emily, and if it wasn’t for her connection with Orpen and her modelling at the Slade School of Art, she would have probably been forgotten in history. She was born sometime in 1877 and in the 1901 UK census, she was listed as a twenty-four year old servant living in Lewisham, London, working for the Churchward family along with a girl called Mary Scobel, who was twenty-two years old at the time and possibly her sister or cousin.