Admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1874, Paul Baudouin studied in the studio of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and also trained under Charles Gleyre and Jules-Élie Delaunay. Known for his decorative paintings in the Symbolist style, often inspired by Antiquity and featuring allegorical figures in landscapes, Baudouin excelled in the technique of fresco painting and founded a studio devoted to its teaching. He notably executed the vast frescoes of the Maison Hannon, a masterpiece of Art Nouveau in Brussels. The artist also received a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition for L’Abreuvoir (The Watering Place) and Les Blanchisseuses (The Washerwomen). He also executed the frescoes of the vault of the peristyle surrounding the garden of the Petit Palais in Paris, composed of three large sections punctuated by female figures of the Season and rhythmically structured by medallions depicting the months alternating with the hours of day and night.
Baudoin also carried out commissions for other public buildings in the Paris region (Saint-Maur-des-Fossés Town Hall), which are still preserved today.
Our painting is, for its part, preparatory to the decoration of the theatre of Rouen, forming part of the eight large panels sketched for this project on the following themes: Orpheus, Melody, Symphony, Heroic Music, Dramatic Music, Dance, Song, Pastoral. The ensemble, now lost, was destroyed in the fire of 28 June 1887. The brushwork visible on the rock and in the lower part of our painting is typical of the artist’s manner, executed with a dry brush and the handle of his brush. Baudouin in fact produced large painted sketches on canvas in the manner of a drawing before executing his compositions in fresco. The use of oil paint testifies to the painter’s intention to place himself in the conditions of executing the final work. The artist chose this technique in order to achieve the same effects of texture and brilliance as in the final murals, likewise executed in oil.
The artist’s touch, the impasto and the striations of stiff brush hairs are very visible in all his sketches as in his final works. The scale of these marks may vary. Paul Baudouin used brushes ranging from approximately four centimetres in width for his mural paintings to four millimetres for his sketches, yet the ratio of ten between the two is always maintained. In our Symphony, the paint is more or less thick according to the area; the impasto is irregular and the pictorial layer is opaque; the colours are obtained through mixing before being applied to the canvas (without glazing).
