Yves Saint Laurent Pierre Bergé - Christie's

116
19th century
paintings
Bold patterning, linear expression, exaggerated form and vivid colours are the unifying
hallmarks of the 19th-century paintings in the collection of Yves Saint Laurent
and Pierre Bergé. Combined with Romantic and Symbolist pictures of extraordinary
intensity – psychological, spiritual and physical – they reveal an individuality of taste
quite independent of the whims of the art market.
While the energetic and naturalist nudes of Théodore Géricault were at odds with the
stylised and linear prototypes of his master, Pierre Guérin, it is particularly his child
portraits which are so different from the horses, military and neoclassical subjects so
usually associated the artist. Yet, despite the singularity of their subject matter, few
works better define the epithet of ‘Romantic’ commonly attached to the artist.
Conceived at a time when Géricault was striving, above all else, towards a greater
force of expression, his children are sculptural, massively formed and jarring for
the sense of psychological distance they convey. Alienated completely from the
domestic trappings which normally define the genre of child portraiture, their strongly
contoured features loom out against barren landscapes and foreboding skies, with a
disturbing, almost surreal intensity, which recalls at once the work of Goya and
de Chirico. Indeed the latter’s painting, Les Revenants – featuring two giant mannequin
figures in a surreal interior – hanging on the opposite wall to Géricault’s Portrait d’Alfred
et Elisabeth Dedreux, is an apposite echo to the earlier work. Bold statements, far from
the mainstream, these are works which demand a strong reaction from the viewer.
Salon, rue Bonaparte
– Sebastian Goetz
Specialist in 19th Century Pictures, Paris