François-Marius Granet

Dramatic and powerful with a ghoulish and unnerving subject matter, this small scale but commanding composition demonstrates Granet’s skill in creating contrasting light effects, combining the white of the paper with varying tones of brown wash.

The present sheet was probably executed shortly after Granet’s return from Italy in 1824 and can be closely compared to La Mort vient éteindre la lampe de Girodet pendant qu’il peint la nuit, dated circa 1824, now in the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence.¹ The subject of the present drawing was possibly one the artist conjured from his imagination or it could also be a record of his own participation in an incantation ceremony. The monogram-like mark at the lower right of the sheet resembles the seal of Gabriel, one of the twelve ‘Dukes’ of the demon Amenadiel, as presented in a sheet of a nineteenth-century book of incantations.²

François Marius Grant was a pupil of Jean-Antoine Constantin and he also trained for a brief period in the studio of Jacques Louis David. In 1802 he travelled to Rome where he stayed for over twenty years, carving out a successful artistic career which, among other commissions, included selling views of Rome to French tourists. On his return to France in 1824 he was appointed curator at the Louvre. Many of his drawings and watercolours are now in his birthplace of Aix en Provence, in the collection of the Musée Granet, and a large collection is also housed in Paris at the Musée du Louvre.

1. S. Allard and M. Chaudonneret, Le Suicide de Gros, Paris 2010, p. 19.

2. Book of incantations, &c., here 1814-31, f. 7v., The National Library of Wales, NLW MS 11117B