- 83
François-Xavier Fabre
Description
- François-Xavier Fabre
- Saint Anthony of Padua Introducing Two Novices to Friars in a Mountainous Landscape
- signed and dated lower left: F.x. Fabre / 1815.
- oil on canvas, unlined
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Although known primarily today as a portraitist to the elite in his adopted city of Florence, Fabre was also a highly accomplished landscapist. Initially following in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin, his landscapes became increasingly influenced by other contemporary French artists working in Italy, such as Louis Gauffier (1762-1801) and Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), as well as the German artist Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807).1
This is one of the only known dated works from 1815, a year in which Fabre executed almost no paintings due to both political unrest throughout Europe related to the rise of the First Empire, as well as health issues related to gout.2 The canvas is unlined and beautifully preserved, which allows the artist to demonstrate the highly refined style which he had absorbed from his French contemporaries. This meticulous, linear approach to painting naturalistic detail would have also been developed in part through his prolific work as a draughtsman. No less than 500 examples of Fabre's drawings exist today, most preserved in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier and Uffizi, Florence. Many of these would have been completed en plein air, in local Florentine parks such as the Cascine, a favorite destination for the artist. This landscape, which does exhibit a freshness often associated with plein air painting, also demonstrates Fabre's characteristic refinement, notably in the foliage, and subtle play of light along the receding rock formations. Furthermore, and perhaps most central to Fabre's success as a landscapist, is his ability to combine this technically sound naturalism with a carefully constructed sense of idealism and deliberate spatial construction. The landscape presented here, is not a specific Tuscan location, but rather an assemblage of motifs which give an overall sense of calm, beauty, and harmony. It is for this reason that we see other examples from Fabre's oeuvre which share basic compositional designs. Specifically, the rocky cliff background, which recedes to the right above a calm body of water and is crowned by a neo-classical temple (or in the present example, probably a Franciscan monastery), is found also in his Death of Narcissus (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), a work executed in 1814, only a year prior to this canvas.
We are grateful to Laure Pellicer for confirming the attribution of the present work to Fabre, and to Françoise Pellicer for identifying the subject of the work, as well as for their assistance in the cataloguing of the picture.
1. M. Hilaire, ed., French Paintings from the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, exhibition catalogue, Canberra 2003-4, p. 188.
2. Laure Pellicer in private communication, October 2011.