Louis Hector Leroux (27 December 1829, Verdun-11 November 1900, Angers) was a French painter in the academic style, affiliated by critics with the Néo-Grecs movement in art. He specialized in meticulously researched paintings of ancient Rome, especially depictions of women. He was best known for a series of some thirty paintings which spanned his entire career, depicting Vestal virgins. His daughter, Laura Leroux-Revault, was also a painter.
Education, years in Rome Born into a family of modest means in Verdun, Leroux was apprenticed to his father, a barber, before attending drawing classes at the Collège de Verdun, taught by a painter trained in the workshops of Antoine-Jean Gros and Michel Martin Drolling, who quickly spotted his talent. From 1849 to 1855, first the General Council of the Meuse and then the city of Verdun granted him annual scholarships to pursue his education in Paris.Gohel, p. 13.
In 1849, at the age of twenty, he entered the École des beaux-arts de Paris and for eleven years studied in the atelier of François-Édouard Picot, where he won medals for drawing, landscape, and historical composition. It was in Picot's studio that he met his lifelong friend Jean-Jacques Henner. He supported himself by working as a lithographer and as an illustrator for fashion journals.Couëlle (2008), p. 209Katow.
In 1857, 1858, and 1859 he entered the annual competition for the Prix de Rome, administered by the Institut de France, which awarded the Grand Prix winner a multi-year scholarship to study and paint in Rome. He came close; his painting for 1857, when the assigned subject was the resurrection of Lazarus, received the Premier Second Grand Prix.Barthélemy, Joseph, and Guiffrey, Jules. Liste des pensionnaires de l'Académie de France à Rome, donnant les noms de tous les artistes récompensés dans les concours du Prix de Rome de 1663 à 1907 , Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1908, p. 118. After 1859, Leroux could no longer compete for the prize, which was restricted to entrants under the age of thirty.Lee, Simon. "Prix de Rome", Grove Art online, published online 2003. Determined that Leroux should go to Rome, his master Picot, along with Hippolyte Flandrin and Léon Halévy of the Institut, arranged for Leroux to receive a commission in 1860 from the École des beaux-arts de Paris to produce a copy of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love at the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The commission paid for his travel and provided lodging at the French Academy in Rome, alongside the winners of the Prix de Rome.Couëlle (2008), pp. 209-210.
Leroux arrived in Rome on March 12, 1860. At the Villa Medici he was welcomed by his friend Henner, who had won the Prix de Rome in 1858,Couëlle (2008), pp. 210 and 232. and subsequently met and befriended Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu (Prix de Rome, 1855), Jules Joseph Lefebvre (Prix de Rome, 1861), Léon Bonnat, and Tony Robert-Fleury.Mlochowski de Bélina, p. 357 In 1861, this group of friends, along with numerous other French artists, architects, musicians, and sculptors in Rome, formed a group called the (Italian for grilled chestnuts), which met for annual banquets in Paris for many years afterwards.
After his copy of Titian was completed and sent to Paris, Leroux stayed on in Rome, supporting himself, alongside Henner, by painting picturesque scenes for the foreign tourists. He and Henner also traveled beyond Rome, including trips to Pompeii, immersing themselves in the landscapes, art, and archeology of Italy.Couëlle (2008), p. 210. "My path opened before me; I was fated for antiquity," Leroux later said. "There I was in Rome, surrounded by history, and it would have been hard for me not to follow my calling."Montrosier, p. 106.
Leroux lived seventeen years in Rome, with excursions across Italy and beyond to Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey, and Egypt, as well as some return trips to France. In 1871 he married a young Italian, Giuditta Clelia Casali.
Painter of Vestals
In 1863, at the age of 33, Leroux debuted at the Paris Salon with two paintings: Croyantes ("Believers," also known as Invocation to the Goddess Hygieia) and Une Nouvelle Vestale. Both were set in the ancient world, and both depicted women in religious contexts. Croyantes shows two women helping an ailing supplicant to approach a statue of a goddess in hopes of obtaining a divine cure, while Une Nouvelle Vestale depicts a candidate for the chaste life of a keeper of the holy flame of Vesta, protector of the city of Rome. In following years, Leroux would return repeatedly to both themes.
The idea to paint a Vestal did not originate with Leroux, but from a commission he received from the École des beaux-arts de Paris that specified the subject.Couëlle (2008), p. 223: "Ce hasard est une commande qui lui avait été faite par les l'École des beaux-arts le 15 janvier 1863 pour une figure de vestale." "Chance made me talk about these virgins from my first painting," he would later say.I have always returned to them, first out of gratitude and then out of sympathy. I collected the scattered fragments of their lives as I found them in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tacitus, Suetonius, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Justus Lipsius, and other authors who have since become my only companions.Montrosier, p. 106-107.
Leroux became best known for his paintings of Vestals (some thirty between 1863 and 1899Couëlle (2008), p. 226.), which were warmly received by critics. Louis Ernault wrote:
Everything pertaining to the Vestal virgins has found in M. Le Roux an illustrator and historian. He shows them to us in the performance of all the functions of their virginal priesthood, sometimes rekindling the symbolic flame on the burning altar; sometimes invoking the goddess; sometimes sitting on the steps of their temple; and sometimes walking in white processions in the countryside with vast horizons...I love these chaste and proud girls of the great Roman aristocracy, charged with watching over the eternal fire of their goddess, and smothering in their marble bosoms the flames of all mortal love."Ernault, Louis. Salon de 1883, Paris: E. Bernard, 1883, p. 20; and Salon de 1885, Paris: E. Bernard, 1885, p. 17.
His final painting submitted to the Paris Salon, in 1899, the year before his death, closed the long series devoted to Vestals with a grim finis. It was titled, La gardienne du Champ scélérat, lieu de sépulture des Vestales enterrées vives, à Rome ("Guardian of the Crime-Stained Field, Graveyard of Vestal Virgins Buried Alive, in Rome." The punishment for a Vestal who broke her vow of chastity was to be entombed alive.)Couëlle, p. 211
Other themes Besides Vestals, Leroux painted a number of other images inspired by the ancient world, almost invariably centered on women, including paintings of Sappho, Messalina, the Lesbia of Catullus,Couëlle (2008), p. 230, cites four paintings of Lesbia from 1868 to 1878. the mythical Danaïdes, a Sibyl, and women at worship at sacred shrines, usually in groups, but in one case a lone supplicant seeking vengeance on a faithless lover or a rival by making sacrifice to Eros Ultor (Avenging Eros).
Historical accuracy, scholarship
In his lifetime, Leroux was highly respected by colleagues and praised by critics, including Théophile Gautier, who coined the term Néo-Grecs,Couëlle (2008), p, 212. and his work was sought after by collectors including Americans John Jacob Astor III and Samuel P. Avery.In 1880, Astor owned École des vestales, and Avery owned Vestale endormie, both shown at the Paris Salon that year; see the Salon catalogue for 1880, p. 228. His deep research and historical accuracy were often cited. Wrote an American critic,Hector Leroux's works always impress the spectator with the idea that the soul of an antique Greek or Roman has somehow strayed downward through the centuries, and become incarnate in the person of a Frenchman of the nineteenth century. He paints the scenes and personages of classical antiquity as though he had dwelt among them.
While living in Italy, he followed the work of pioneering archaeologists and collaborated with them; Pietro Rosa, excavating the House of Livia on the Palatine Hill in 1869, commissioned Leroux to make watercolor copies of the ancient wall paintings "before they faded."Couëlle (2008), p. 212, quoting Moniteur des architectes, June 15, 1869, p. 172. For the library of the École des beaux-arts de Paris he was commissioned to produce a meticulous study of antique costume embellished with numerous sketches, a work which survives in manuscript form.Couëlle (2008), p. 222, citing "Hector Leroux, Archéologue du Costume Antique" by Philippe Bruneau in Gohel, pp. 33-34.
His painting of a Sibyl, one of the legendary oracles of the ancient world, carried on the tradition of painters including Michelangelo and Guercino, but with authentic ancient furnishing and costume; instead of an anachronistic codex, the Sibyl's prophetic books are scrolls contained in a cylindrical Roman capsa.
Leroux's accuracy was not always flawless. Vestals were recruited among girls no older than ten, but Leroux's Une Nouvelle Vestale of 1863 shows a considerably older girl being presented by the Pontifex Maximus to the Virgo Maxima. "I will not examine whether this composition is exactly consistent with historical data," wrote Marius Chaumelin in his review of the Paris Salon of 1863; "I will only point out that the novice seems to have far exceeded the upper age limit (10 years), below which the new priestesses of Vesta were chosen from the patrician families.""Salon de 1863: Sujets Historiques—Histoire ancienne" by Marius Chaumelin, in Tribune artistique et littéraire du Midi, Marseille: Camoin frères, 1863, p. 169. A later painting by Leroux, depicting the inauguration of a Vestal, shows an aspirant of more suitable age.
Vestals who broke their vow of chastity were entombed alive. For the lesser offense of allowing the sacred flame of Vesta to be extinguished, the punishment was to be scourged with rods,Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2.67; Livy, 28.11. yet Leroux, perhaps misreading the sources, believed extinction of the flame was a capital offense. In Un miracle chez la bonne déesse of 1869, he depicts a Vestal imploring a statue of the Bona Dea; describing the painting in a letter to Henner, Leroux wrote, "A young Vestal let her fire be extinguished! This is a serious matter. The whole body of Vestals has gathered and the culprit has just been sentenced to death."Couëlle (2008), pp. 227-228. In a letter to an American collector, he wrote, "You do not know how terrible was the law ruling this company of virgins. They must constantly tend the sacred fire; if extinguished, it was death."Quoted by Strahan (1882), p. 32. Leroux produced multiple images of a negligent Vestal asleep, the dying flame beside her foreshadowing her doom.
Interpretations The French scholar Colombe Couëlle, who has written extensively on Leroux, notes his austere aesthetic sensibility, which set him apart from the more colorful Néo-Grecs such as Jean-Léon Gérôme or the "more powerful but much less refined" Gustave Boulanger:The ancient world of Leroux is not very luminous in its colors. Sanctuaries with darkened tones, scenes of interiors drowned in darkness, twilight landscapes. The Mediterranean sky hardly enters the painter's canvases. He focuses his work on the attitudes, the gestures of the women who run through his compositions. He enters into intimacy with them through a sieving of light, as if he had an indispensable filter between their time and his own, to better grasp the essence of their existence.