Jean-Charles-Nicaise Perrin

Private Collection, Paris.

Montargis, musée Girodet, Un peintre sous la Révolution : Jean-Charles-Nicaise Perrin, June-September 1989, no.46.

This subject, taken from Herodotus, depicts Astyages, King of the Medes, issuing the order that his grandson Cyrus be killed at birth, so that as an adult he would not usurp his throne. However, the child was saved; he later became king of the Medes and the Persians after vanquishing Astyages. The subject was rare and not easily understood by his contemporaries so required a very long explanatory note in the Salon catalogue.

The frieze composition obeys the aesthetic canons of pure Neoclassicism. Balanced and harmonious, it shows Astyages in the centre, gesturing dramatically as he orders that Cyrus be put to death forthwith. A group of weeping women occupies a secondary place on the right. Jacques-Louis David’s influence on Perrin

is clearly apparent: the solemn layout, Astyages’s gesture and the role of the women recalls, within reason, David’s very famous Oath of the Horatii, painted in 1784 (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 3692).

Perrin returned to the subject several times. A very large painting was exhibited at the 1802 Salon (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 7167). Another smaller work, which displays some variations from the work in the Salon, is a preparatory study for it, according to the catalogue of the Perrin exhibition (in a German collection in 1989). The composition and figures in our painting are very different from these two versions, although the same architectural motifs can be found in the German version. Is it nevertheless a first idea for the Louvre painting, as is suggested in the exhibition catalogue (op. cit.) or a separate composition?

Nicaise Perrin was famous in his time as a history painter. Contemporary with Peyron and David, he was fascinated by the Neoclassical ideal and favoured noble subjects, painted with rigorous austerity. A well-regarded painter, his career was punctuated with public commissions and regular exhibitions at the Salon, both under the Ancien Régime and after the Revolution. Less well-known as a portraitist, he nevertheless excelled in this genre, as evidenced by the magnificent portrait of his wife, exhibited at the 1791 Salon and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes. Its very high quality attests to Perrin’s talent for painting his model in a supple and natural style, with a true grasp of personality. The treatment of materials and drapery is remarkable. Counting among Perrin’s masterpieces, it has often been likened to the best contemporary paintings by David.