Henry-Pierre Picou - Gallerie d'Apollon

The painting can be defined as a genre scene, that is, the representation
of an episode of daily life which, apparently, has no element
significant. These types of domestic subjects were long considered
as minor and began to spread, in Western art, only starting from
from the 17th century. Only with the development of the 19th century realistic currents
subjects of everyday life were considered of the same importance as
historical or religious ones. Henry-Pierre Picou is one of the greatest exponents
French academic painting of the nineteenth century, specialized precisely in
representation of historical-mythological scenes. In the work in question,
Instead, the artist is inspired by the genre scene set in a museum or in a
gallery. A very popular subject starting in the eighteenth century, it combines narrative taste with an accurate description of the environment, almost transforming the painting
in a photographic testimony of the works contained in the gallery.

The work has been attributed to Henry-Pierre Picou, who is indeed a
perfect interpreter of the genre scene in all its codified rules.
The work, in fact, wonderfully illustrates its era with an extraordinary
power of representation. Picou's desire is to capture on the canvas
the symbolic image of an era, which is expressed already starting from the idea of
composition in which the subject is coherently united with the environment
reference. The union between subject and environment is inseparable and also strengthened
from the structure of the work, built according to a rigorous perspective (very
The diagonal escape of the gallery is scenographic). It goes without saying that, in a painting
in this area, descriptive clarity must be a characteristic
essential of pictorial art. In fact, Picou's works are characterised by a
perfect naturalistic rendering, impeccable in the description of every single piece of data
objective. A style that can be defined as academic, illustrious
testimony of that pompier painting which, at the end of the nineteenth century in France,
proud of its own tradition, it opposed the Impressionist innovations.
These are all characteristics that we find expressed in the painting in
object. Which is also characterised by a great softness of
touch, through which the artist manages to obtain a total fusion of the
objects in the atmospheric, coherent and luminous space of the work.

The work has been attributed to Henri-Pierre Picou (Nantes, 1824 – 1895). His
work began with portraits and classical historical subjects, but later moved on to themes
allegorical and mythological. He was an academic painter and one of the founders of the school
Neo-Greek. His artistic debut took place at the Salon in 1847. The year
he later received a second class medal for his work,
Cléopâtre and Antoine on the Cydnus. Picou maintained a large laboratory in
Paris on the Boulevard de Magenta, which offered him space to work on his
large frescoes. His popularity continued to grow and he won the Second Prix
de Rome in 1853 for his painting, Jésus chassant les vendeurs du Temple
(The usurers expelled from the temple), and another second class medal for the
his painting at the Salon in 1857. From his debut in 1847, he was a regular
frequenter of the Salon, exhibiting almost every year until his last
exhibition in 1893. He was called the most fashionable painter towards the end of the
Second French Empire.

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