Nymphs and Satyr by Bouguereau: Ambition, Desire, and the Chase (1873)
In a shady forest pool, four laughing nymphs have caught a satyr. They pull him by the arms and push him from behind, dragging the goat-legged creature towards the water, which he clearly does not want to enter. One of his hooves is already at the edge. In the shadows on the left, other nymphs watch and beckon. William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr, the great success of the Paris Salon of 1873, turns the usual myth upside down: here the women are the hunters and the satyr is the prey.
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Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905)
Date: 1873
Medium: Oil on canvas, 260 × 180 cm
Collection: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (acquired by Robert Sterling Clark in 1942)
First shown: Paris Salon, 1873
What does the painting show?
In Greek myth, satyrs were half-man, half-goat creatures of the woods, companions of Dionysus, famous for their appetite for wine and for chasing nymphs. The Clark Art Institute describes the scene as a group of nymphs surprised while bathing in a secluded pond by a lascivious satyr. Instead of fleeing, the boldest of them turn the tables and decide to throw him into the water.
Bouguereau arranges the four main figures in a whirling circle that seems to rotate around the satyr. One nymph grips his arm and leans back with all her weight; another pushes his shoulder; a third, her arms raised, laughs as she pulls him; the fourth, at the right, looks back and calls to her companions in the shadows. The satyr, with his horns, pointed ears and shaggy goat legs, digs in his hooves and turns his head away, half alarmed, half amused.
The contrast of skin tones is deliberate: the pale, luminous bodies of the nymphs against the tanned, hairy figure of the satyr and the deep green of the forest. When the picture was shown at the Salon, it carried a line from the Roman poet Statius about the satyr's fear of deep water, giving the joke a learned, classical pedigree.
"The greatest painting of our generation"
At the Salon of 1873 the painting was a sensation, and one critic called it the greatest painting of his generation. Bouguereau was then at the height of his fame, admired for the perfection of his drawing and his porcelain-smooth finish. In June 1873 the New York collector John Wolfe bought it for 35,000 francs. Wolfe was a passionate buyer of French Salon painting: he was also the first owner of Pierre-Auguste Cot's Springtime, another star of the Salon of 1873.
The painting's later history is a comedy of its own. From 1888 it hung over the bar of the Hoffman House hotel in Manhattan, where it became one of the most famous pictures in New York. In 1901 it was sold, and its new owner, worried that it was too risqué, put it into storage. It stayed out of sight until 1942, when the collector Robert Sterling Clark rescued it. Today it is one of the most popular works in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Bouguereau's myths
Bouguereau painted classical subjects throughout his long career, from the violence of Dante and Virgil and the guilt of Orestes Pursued by the Furies to the sensuality of The Wave. Nymphs and Satyr is his most playful. Compare it with Cabanel's Birth of Venus, the other great Salon nude of the period.
Where can you see it?
The painting hangs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, a museum known for its outstanding collection of nineteenth-century French painting.
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Sources
Wikipedia, "Nymphs and Satyr"; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Springtime" (2012.575).
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