 |
| see larger image |
Marion and Valabrègue setting out to paint, 1866
Oil on canvas
This small painting is a remarkable testimony of Cézanne’s direct link to Darwinian thought in France.
It shows two of the artist’s closest friends: on the right, the poet Antonie Valabrègue, wearing a fashionable top-hat; and on the left, Antoine Fortuné Marion, a one-time painter who became Director of the Museum of Natural History in Marseilles. With his friend, Gaston de Saporta, Marion became one of Darwin’s leading supporters in France.
The two men are shown setting off on a painting expedition – as suggested by the easel which Marion carries on his back. This was one of many such painting trips they made together with Cézanne, during which, as Joachim Gasquet recalled, Marion,‘with brush in hand, would expound on Darwinian ideas and speak of his own discovery of anthropoidal skeletons at the foot of Sainte-Victoire. He would sketch out the history of the world and the origin of that corner of Provence and of the landscapes they painted ... He became excited. The thrill of science enveloped the two men.’
In 1866, Cézanne wrote that he was working on a ‘big picture’ of his two friends, although today only this reduced version is known.
Museo Soumaya. Fundación Carlos Slim, Mexico City
