135 - Louis Anquetin (French, 1861-1932) Allegory of the Massacre of the Innocents bears studio stamp 'Anquetin' (lower right); bears studio stamp (verso) black chalk and graphite Unframed: 33.7 x 23 cm (13 1/4 x 9 in.) By descent to the artist's heirs, by whom sold at his studio sale 'Atelier Louis Anquetin, 1861-1932'; Hôtel Drouot, Thierry de Maigret, Paris, 28 November 2008 (Anquetin’s drawings were marked with 2 Cachets d’atelier: Lugt 3815 (recto, replicating his signature) and Lugt 3816 (verso, his studio stamp)); Private Collection, U.K. Louis Anquetin, an extraordinary draughtsman, lithographer and painter, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he developed a close friendship with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Together they entered the studio of the academic painter Fernand Cormon, where they befriended Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. Cormon prepared his students to meet the strict standards of the Salon jury, but in this respect these young nonconformists proved to be his least successful students. Having completed their studies, this band of radicals assembled at the café-cabaret hotspots in Montmartre where they enlisted Paul Gauguin. For his part, Anquetin emerged as a prime mover of the Parisian avant-garde. In 1887 he and Bernard developed Cloisonnism, rejecting naturalism for greater abstraction and symbolism.1 The present drawing is a comparatively rare example from around the mid-1890s when the artist’s focus shifted to the Old Masters – most notably Rubens. Here, the dramatic lighting and sweeping diagonal movement of the twisting, muscular figures are clearly inspired by Rubens’s religious paintings. Anquetin’s visionary allegorical scene of the Massacre of the Innocents is astonishing. The intense chalkwork captures the visceral physical struggle between the executioners – one bearing a knife, the other a mallet – and their victim, bound to the upright of the cross and desperately struggling to protect her newborn infants. Anquetin further developed the narrative in three studies in private collections. The first (A), executed in black and red chalks, shows the figure of Christ in full. He witnesses the event, his body counterpointing that of the mother as their gazes meet. The knife-wielding executioner has been moved to the right of the composition, while further victims of the massacre and a horseman, who stares up at Christ, have been added on the left. Directly above him, a Pope enthroned beneath a canopy raises his hand as though imploring the perpetrators to relent. The second study (B) renders the narrative more dramatically in dense flurries of black chalk. Here a shaft of celestial light descends upon the mother at the foot of the cross. Finally, in (C), the papal canopy is more fully realised, and by smudging the secondary areas of the composition, the primary figures are given greater prominence. At the foot of the drawing are colour notes, but it is not known whether a related painting was ever executed. Whether or not he was driven by religious devotion, Anquetin was evidently deeply moved by the tragic biblical narrative of the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16-18). His anachronistic allegory – placing Christ and the Pope in the same chaotic scene – verges on surrealism. By depicting Christ, about to expire on the cross and witnessing the deaths of the very first martyrs who died in his place, Anquetin collapses centuries of history into what may be a uniquely powerful critique. Ultimately, however, the artist’s true intentions remain an enigma. References: 1 Brame et Lorenceau, Anquetin, La passion d’être peintre, Paris 1991, p. 17 Picture A / Picture B / Picture C