Guillaume Seignac (French, 1870-1924) Cupid and Psyche Oil on canvas 53 x 36 inches (134.6 x 91.4 cm) Signed lower r...

Guillaume Seignac (French, 1870-1924) Cupid and Psyche Oil on canvas 53 x 36 inches (134.6 x 91.4 cm) Signed lower right: G-SEIGNAC PROVENANCE: Private collection, Miami, Oklahoma, acquired circa 1970; Acquired by the present owner from the above. Perhaps the greatest love story of the ancient world, the tale of Cupid and Psyche, symbolizing the power of love and its ability to shape the soul, has provided boundless inspiration for artists across the ages. Trained in the academic style at the École des Beaux-Arts, Guillaume Seignac specialized in allegorical subjects, approaching the present work as part of a broader Platonic tradition, highlighting the concept of love (Cupid) shaping the self (Psyche) instead of pushing the baser sexual aspects of the myth to the forefront. Overtly erotic representations were favored in the earlier Rococo period, with the central figures often depicted as two young and beautiful people of the same age. Seignac avoids that conception entirely in this iteration, going so far as to abstain from excessive use of reds and pinks, the colors of passion, in favor of a cooler, less suggestive palette. Seignac studied under the master academician William-Adolphe Bouguereau from 1889 to 1895, which all but guarantees a familiarity with Bouguereau's Amour et Psyché from 1890. Bouguereau's composition, showing the central figures both as winged babies in a pastel cloudscape, emphasized the innocence of the figures at an early point in the story, after they have fallen into innocent true love, but before the wrath of Venus befalls them; while also presenting a more restrained appeal to the Salon, where contemporary Victorian sensibilities more strongly favored the chaste. Bouguereau's influence on his pupil is evident, but Seignac was not without his own strengths and individualism – the classical curriculum at the École introduced him to the work of Phidias, a legendary master sculptor from antiquity, best known for his exquisite rendering of drapery in marble. Displaying the full strength of his education, and perhaps in purposeful juxtaposition with Bouguereau, a titan of nudity renowned for his rendering of soft alabaster skin, Seignac expressed the human form not by laying it bare, but by revealing it from within and beneath an inspired use of drapery. This method of showing the sensual curvature of the female form without overt nudity allowed him a broad commercial appeal during his lifetime. HID12701242017