5 - H. BELLANGÉ (1800–1866), A monument overgrown with vegetation, circa 1850, pen drawing

H. BELLANGÉ (1800–1866), A monument overgrown with vegetation, circa 1850, pen drawing Hippolyte Bellangé (1800 Paris – 1866 ibid.): A monument overgrown with vegetation, c. 1850, pen drawing Technique: Pen drawing on paper Inscription: Monogrammed lower right: “ht. Bgé” Date: c. 1850 Description: What does a battle painter paint if he doesn’t paint battles? Hippolyte Bellangé was one of the most important battle painters in France during the reigns of Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III. His vast body of work, filled with thousands of soldiers, weapons, and horses, depicts humanity as a mass. He is highly celebrated and decorated for these depictions of massive events. But what he has not lost amid all the painted saber-rattling and dabbed gun smoke is his eye for detail. He was able to bring mass battles to life from a wide angle, yet, as if under a microscope, he was also able to perceive the fate of individual soldiers. Like his friend Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, he depicted the lives of soldiers away from battle in numerous lithographs and drawings—sometimes with melancholic compassion, sometimes with caricatured detachment. But always with an eye for detail, which in his case was not limited to outward appearances but sometimes also took on psychological dimensions. But now back to the initial question: What does he paint now? First of all, very little else. Even when he ventures into genre painting, there is always a uniform somewhere that has found its way into the picture in one way or another. This makes our drawing all the more astonishing: it depicts a destroyed piece of Christian art rendered in that incomparably nervous stroke. It has been decaying and forgotten for so long that nature has reached out its delicate fingers to claim it. The cross lies broken on the ground. It is hard to imagine that it could ever return to its former splendor. If you are familiar with Bellangé’s focused depictions, in which the mistreated soldiers who have returned home are portrayed, you cannot help but recognize an emotional connotation in this broken monument. Broken and lonely: these are words that can also be applied to the soldiers. In addition to this emotional dimension, what is particularly fascinating about this small and incredibly free drawing is the trembling line that never stops and flits across the page as if driven by some force, from which the clear forms emerge only slowly, only to be swallowed up again the next moment by another twitch of lines. This dynamic, almost breathing process is the special charm of this drawing, which is unusual for Bellangé, but exciting precisely because of it. Keywords: Monument; Cross; Cemetery; Small-scale architecture; Sculpture; Column; Antique; Figure; Ruin; Vanitas; 19th century; Romanticism; Architecture; France; Size: Paper: 19.5 cm x 13.3 cm (7.7 x 5.2 in) Condition: Good condition. Slightly browned. The margins are irregularly trimmed. Minor restoration in the upper right margin.