Salomé
A refined artist, Pierre Amédée Marcel-Béronneau was, among the students of Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), the true heir to his style. A lover of sumptuous art, atmospheres misted with incense fumes, a taste for intricate exotic jewellery, fascinated by myths and religions, Béronneau was also a great interpreter of French symbolism.
Born in Bordeaux in 1869, he began his artistic training at the city’s École municipale des Beaux-Arts. In 1890, he moved to Paris and two years later enrolled at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs. These were crucial years for French culture. For almost a decade, the new Symbolist movement had been increasingly winning over the intelligentsia, who were seeking to escape the triviality of society. It was no coincidence that Béronneau, after studying with Eugène Thirion (1839-1910), decided to join the studio of Gustave Moreau, considered to be the father of this movement in painting. The young artist won the master’s esteem by succeeding in combining in his creations various influences from academic painting and fifteenth-century Italian art.
The influence of his master, clearly recognisable in his works, became a characteristic feature of the artist, who nevertheless managed to interpret it in his own way, blending it with the academic influences of his training. Béronneau’s figures were less slender than those of his master, and more drawn in their volumes. In 1895, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Aristes Français, and in 1897 he took part in the last edition of the Salon de la Rose+Croix, an artistic event organised by the eccentric Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), a writer, critic and occultist who favoured a return to religious art with decadent symbolist overtones. For this exhibition, he presented one of his most famous works, Orpheus (fig. 1), an ambitious image depicting the Thracian hero’s descent into hell. Towards the end of the century, Béronneau became one of the leading figures of the French Symbolist movement, thanks to his refined treatment of mythical subjects, the elegance of his technique and the suggestive power of his images. His works can be found in a number of French public collections, including the Musée du Louvre, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and the Musée de Marseille.
One of the recurring themes in Béronneau’s work is that of femmes fatales, bewitchingly sensual feminine beauties, enchantresses and devourers of men. Among the various Gorgons and Judiths, it is the figure of Salomé that recurs most often in his work. Here, she is depicted in a frontal, hieratic pose. Her white skin and pupil-less eyes make her look like a terrible idol covered in opulent oriental jewellery. The paint is extremely diluted, and the colours seem to come together as if on a painter’s palette, in tiny touches. The style is very close to that of Moreau, which is why the painting must have been executed in the early years of the painter’s Symbolist turn, i.e. around 1892-1897.
