Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

1. William Tell and Gessler, Toulouse, musée des Augustins. 2. Gessler, study for William Tell and Gessler,
Toulouse, musée des Augustins.
presented at the Salon three years later in 1795, and
which is now in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse
(fig.1) 1 . Being himself of Genevan origin, this was for
him a patriotic picture, illustrating an episode from the
life of the hero William Tell. Symbol of Swiss resistance
to the Austrian occupation, this more or less legendary
figure was of particular resonance in France during the
years of the Revolution. As Jean-Pierre Cuzin notes: ‘it
came naturally to Vincent, being of Genevan origin, to
see William Tell as a hero of national independence,
and indeed he became for the Jacobins, together with
Brutus, an often represented Republican hero’. 2
The subject is taken from the tragedy by Antoine-Marin
Lemierre (1733-1793), Guillaume Tell, written in 1766
and often staged during the Revolution. For having
refused to bow to the hat of Gessler, bailiff to the Austrian
emperor, which he had hung on a pole in the main square
of the village, William Tell was ordered to fire an arrow at
an apple placed on his son’s head. He was successful in
this exploit but the bailiff noticed that Tell had concealed
a second arrow, intended for killing Gessler himself, if
the son had died. Tell was placed in chains and put in a
boat with his companion Mechtal heading for a fortress
on the other shore of the Lake of Lucerne when a storm
blew up. Only Tell was capable of controlling the boat
and was therefore freed from his chains, but as he got
closer to the bank, he jumped ashore with Mechtal and
pushed back the boat into the turbulent waters. Gessler,
having also survived the waves, tried to reach the fortress
but was killed in the mountains by our hero. In the play
by Lemierre, the account of this episode is given to
William Tell’s wife by Arnold de Mechtal (act V, scene III)
and Vincent cited four verses from this scene in his text
for the livret of the 1795 Salon.
The precise date in which Vincent decided on this
subject and began work is unknown but the discovery
of the present sketch sheds new light on the stages of
its development. Given the importance of the project,
a great number of preparatory works must have
existed, distilled over some years, both for the whole
composition and for details, but until now, the known
preparation for this large Salon painting consisted
only of a drawing for the figure of William Tell (private
collection) 3 and two oil sketches, a small study for
the detail of Gessler upturned in the boat with his
henchmen (fig.2: Musée des Augustins, Toulouse) 4
and a sketch for the entire composition (fig.3; Musée
municipal, Guéret, 65 x 77.5 cm.) 5 . Another drawing
can be added, since lost, but mentioned in the
Grünling sale, in Vienna in 1823 as well as a further
‘étude’ a half-length oil study of William Tell also lost,
but mentioned in the inventory made after the death
of Vincent in 1816 6 .
Unpublished, the present sketch is particularly
interesting because it sheds further light on the huge
labour that this project meant for Vincent. Immediately
apparent are the light tones and the elongated forms
of the figures, which are closer in style to the works
executed in preparation for the Leçon d’agriculture
(the Ploughing Lesson) exhibited at the Salon in 1798
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux) 7 than to either the
finished picture of William Tell and Gessler in Toulouse
or the sketch in Guéret. Excluding the idea that it
could be a later repeated treatment of the subject with
numerous differences (as Vincent on occasion did with
other subjects) it seems clear, as confirmed by Jean-
Pierre Cuzin, that stylistically this canvas precedes
the other known connected works and testifies to an
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