Anacreon - Bacchus and Cupid by Jean-Léon Gérôme

This emblematic work marks the beginnings of the Neo-Grec movement under the aegis of nineteenth-century French academicism. The talented painter Gérôme Jean-Léon delivers here his first major official commission for a French art museum. The composition entitled “Anacreon - Bacchus and Cupid” reinterprets with finesse and elegance ancient poetry and dionysian themes. This bucolic and joyful scene testifies to the artist’s attraction for classical antiquity, which he reinvents with great precision.

In a rural landscape bathed in the soft light of a sunset, the poet Anacreon stands in the center. Wearing a laurel wreath and dressed in a pink and white toga, he plays with fervor on a large wooden lyre. Before him, the child gods Bacchus and Love, completely naked and winged, dance joyfully on the green grass. Bacchus holds a thyrsus surrounded by a leopard skin. On the left, under a large shady tree, a young, completely naked maenad is seated in profile, playing a double flute. In the background, a festive procession of bacchantes and musicians dances, celebrating the triumph of music and wine. The composition is balanced.

The artist’s technical virtuosity is expressed in the sculptural treatment of the maenad’s body and the delicacy of the toga’s draperies. His perfect mastery of academic drawing and oil paint glazes confers an exceptional classical clarity to this mythological scene. His aesthetic sense sublimates the nature and the joy of living of antiquity.