Paul Sérusier

Georges Lacombe, France (a gift from the artist)
Piccadilly Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner on 15th June 1980

Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Gauguin und die Schule von Pont-Aven, 1998, no. 137, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (titled Femmes à la source)
Valencia, Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, 2004

Marcel Guicheteau, Paul Sérusier, Paris, 1976, no. 134, illustrated p. 225 and in colour p. 13

The canvas is lined. UV examination reveals scattered small areas of old retouching to the background and edges, and a thin broken line of retouching to the centre of the yellow sky (approx. 12cm. long), all of which could probably be reduced and improved. There are a few flecks of paint loss towards the upper right corner and the lower part of the right edge. There is some frame rubbing visible along the edges. This work is in overall good condition.
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Imbued with a sensation of timeless enchantment, Les Danaïdes or Femmes à la source depicts a group of women engaged in solemn procession towards a water-source. Paul Sérusier’s choice of title endows the scene with the grandeur of mythology: in ancient Greek lore the Danaides are the fifty daughters of King Danaus, ruler of Egypt and Libya. Married off to the fifty sons of a fellow potentate, forty-nine of the women carry out their father’s brutal instructions to murder their husbands on their wedding night, in order to negate the threat posed by the rival despot. As punishment for this barbaric crime, the Danaides were condemned by the gods to be trapped in an eternal purgatory in which they were compelled to fill water vessels to the brim on a perpetual basis. In Sérusier’s realisation of this myth, the women seem to convey a sense of gentle acceptance at their fate, going about their task bathed in an otherworldly golden glow.

As one of the founding members of Les Nabis, Sérusier sought to express spiritual and abstract ideals within his art through a new style of decorative painting which championed elegance of line and form alongside strong washes of colour. In its atmosphere of religious mysticism as well as in its dramatically flattened tonal planes, Les Danaïdes or Femmes à la source echoes the work of Paul Gauguin, which exerted a profound influence on Sérusier throughout his career. Sérusier had first met Gauguin when he travelled to Pont-Aven in the summer of 1888, an encounter which was to prove of seminal importance for the development of the younger painter’s creative ideals. Greatly inspired by Gauguin’s use of bold areas of colour and his subject matter – in particular his Breton landscapes – Sérusier declared himself to be a ‘follower’ of the artist. The commonality of interests between the two artists was further reinforced by their decision to spend the summer of 1889 painting together, firstly at Pont-Aven, then later in Le Pouldu.

Les Danaïdes or Femmes à la source features a fascinating provenance, having originally formed part of the series of panels which lined the walls of Georges Lacombe’s home, Chateau de l'Ermitage, in Saint Nicolas des bois, Alençon. Although he never attained the recognition of his fellow Nabis, Lacombe (1868-1916) played a key role within the group, and was especially celebrated for his sculptural work. Charles Chassé notes that Lacombe’s ‘studio at Versailles, which Sérusier decorated in 1893, was one of the meeting-places of the Nabis, know to them in their esoteric language as his ergasterium’ (Charles Chassé, The Nabis & their period (trans. Michael Bullock), London, 1969, p. 68).