European Art and Old Masters

Note Son on an engraver, Jacques-Antoine Vallin entered the Académie Royale de Peinture at a young age. Vallin made a name for himself through the highly delicate, and seductive portraits, genre scenes and mythological episodes he painted throughout his career, as shown here. The present work is a newly surfaced, and rare canvas from the early 1790s - a moment when Vallin started to exhibited at the Paris Salon. It depicts a drunken Silenus, Bacchus' own tutor and companion, surrounded by Pan and woodland muses who care to the god inside a forest clearing. The work is consistent with the light-hearted, openly sensual and often mytholigical themes adopted by painters at the end of the 18th century. Yet, its large scale, attention to detail and precise rendering of the shimmering fabrics and the glistening skins announce the art of the early 19th century, that of David and Prud'hon, which speak to the artist's refinement and sense of artistic change.