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Lot Essay
Primarily known as a print-maker and illustrator, Seguin executed a very small painted oeuvre, amounting to fewer than a score of pictures and not quite as many watercolors and drawings. Those who knew Seguin, most notably Paul Gauguin, commended his work for the potential it appeared to hold for the future, only partly realized in the end, which came all too soon. Seguin fell victim to tuberculosis at the age of 34.
Breton born and bred, Seguin arrived in Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs, but attended classes only briefly. He was otherwise self-taught, picking up what useful lessons he might find in looking at the art of his contemporaries and working alongside them. The Groupe Impressionniste et Synthétiste exhibition at the Café Volpini in Paris in 1889 was a revelation for the aspiring 20-year-old artist. “I was captivated by the paintings of Gauguin, Bernard, Filiger and Laval, so clear-cut, affirmative and beautiful,” Seguin wrote in his 1903 memoir. “I still feel joy at the memory” (quoted in R.S. Field, C.L. Strauss and S.J. Wagstaff, Jr., The Prints of Armand Seguin, exh. cat., Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1980, p. 8).
Seguin became a convert to the synthétiste style, but the timing of his visits to Pont-Aven, Gauguin’s accustomed base in Brittany, failed to coincide with the master’s stays there. During this period when back in Paris, Seguin moved among—without actually joining—a group of young painters who were taking classes at the progressive Académie Julian and had also become fervent admirers of Gauguin, with whom they had occasional contact. Seguin still did not cross paths with his exemplar. The two men did not meet until 1894, following Gauguin’s return from his first stay in Tahiti, around the time when the present work was painted.
Les fleurs du mal is among the artist’s most successful paintings. Composed of patches of color, shape and tone that are pieced together to form an overall flat quilt of landscape, dream and suggestion, the painting is an image of escape from the quotidian world into a phantasmagoria outside of space and time. The title, ascribed to the work subsequent to its execution, references the poetry and prose of Charles Baudelaire, whose 1857 book-length poem of the same title was an important inspiration for this generation of Symbolist painters and poets. In it, Baudelaire suggests that the world must be seen-through, not just seen, and that the material realm is no more than a forest of symbols. As in Baudelaire’s verse, the present painting is rife with symbols: the woman damned, her red hair mingling amongst smoke, is slowly engulfed in flames.
Breton born and bred, Seguin arrived in Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs, but attended classes only briefly. He was otherwise self-taught, picking up what useful lessons he might find in looking at the art of his contemporaries and working alongside them. The Groupe Impressionniste et Synthétiste exhibition at the Café Volpini in Paris in 1889 was a revelation for the aspiring 20-year-old artist. “I was captivated by the paintings of Gauguin, Bernard, Filiger and Laval, so clear-cut, affirmative and beautiful,” Seguin wrote in his 1903 memoir. “I still feel joy at the memory” (quoted in R.S. Field, C.L. Strauss and S.J. Wagstaff, Jr., The Prints of Armand Seguin, exh. cat., Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1980, p. 8).
Seguin became a convert to the synthétiste style, but the timing of his visits to Pont-Aven, Gauguin’s accustomed base in Brittany, failed to coincide with the master’s stays there. During this period when back in Paris, Seguin moved among—without actually joining—a group of young painters who were taking classes at the progressive Académie Julian and had also become fervent admirers of Gauguin, with whom they had occasional contact. Seguin still did not cross paths with his exemplar. The two men did not meet until 1894, following Gauguin’s return from his first stay in Tahiti, around the time when the present work was painted.
Les fleurs du mal is among the artist’s most successful paintings. Composed of patches of color, shape and tone that are pieced together to form an overall flat quilt of landscape, dream and suggestion, the painting is an image of escape from the quotidian world into a phantasmagoria outside of space and time. The title, ascribed to the work subsequent to its execution, references the poetry and prose of Charles Baudelaire, whose 1857 book-length poem of the same title was an important inspiration for this generation of Symbolist painters and poets. In it, Baudelaire suggests that the world must be seen-through, not just seen, and that the material realm is no more than a forest of symbols. As in Baudelaire’s verse, the present painting is rife with symbols: the woman damned, her red hair mingling amongst smoke, is slowly engulfed in flames.