Saint Sebastian, Martyr is a painting by Théodule Ribot. It was exhibited at the salon of 1865 and is now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris.
Provenance The painting was purchased by the French state from the 1865 salon for the Musée du Luxembourg where it remained until 1874. In that year it was assigned to the Louvre, and in 1980 it was reassigned to the Musée d’Orsay. This painting established Ribot’s reputation as a successful artist.
Composition Ribot’s painting did not depict Saint Sebastian in the conventional way, tied to a tree and pierced with arrows. Instead he focused on moments after the martyr was released, when Saint Irene and one of her servants were bathing his wounds. In this scene, only a broken arrow and the remains of a rope around his right wrist recall his ordeal. The painting is noteworthy mainly for its use of light. The scene is brightly lit from the upper right corner, so that Saint Sebastian’s body stands out against the kneeling women in dark clothing who are themselves obscured against the dark background. It should be noted though that the gradual shift from light to shadow that the contemporary gallery visitors sees is not what visitors in 1865 would have seen - the industrially produced paints Ribot used have slowly changed colour over time, meaning that the shadows are today much darker than they were when the canvas was painted. Nevertheless :fr: Alfred Sensier commented, when the painting was first exhibited, that it was hard to tell what the women were doing.
Exhibition history 1865 - Salon - Palais des Champs Elysées - France, Paris 1866 - Salon - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux 1879 - International Art Exhibition - Glaspalast (Munich) 1918 - Contemporary French Painting 1870-1914 - unknown organization - Spain, Madrid 1934 - Retrospective exhibition: Th. Ribot, painter and etcher - town hall, Colombes 1969 - French 19th Century Painting - Minneapolis Institute of Art 1973-4 - Copies, Replicas, Pastiches - Louvre, Paris 1974 - The Luxembourg Museum in 1874 - paintings - National Galleries of the Grand Palais, Paris 1983-4 - Saint Sebastian, rituals and figures - Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, Paris 2010 - Impressionism: A New Renaissance - Mapfre Foundation, Madrid, 2010 - Birth of Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 2010-11 - Birth of Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay - Frist Art Museum, Nashville 2012-13 - Sensuality and Spirituality: In Search of the Absolute - Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner, Paris 2017 - Manet and Modern Paris - Palazzo Reale, Milan 2018-19 - Théodule Ribot, L'Esprit et la Chère - :fr: Musée Roybet-Fould, Courbevoie 2019 - D'ombre et de lumière, Théodule Ribot (1823-1891) - :fr: Musée municipal d'Art et d'Histoire de Colombes 2021-2 - Théodule Ribot (1823-1891). Une délicieuse obscurité - Musée des Augustins, Toulouse 2022 - Théodule Ribot (1823-1891). Une délicieuse obscurité - Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille 2022 - Théodule Ribot (1823-1891). Une délicieuse obscurité - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
Critical reception The painting was one of the great successes of the 1865 salon. Théophile Thoré-Bürger described Ribot as “more of a painter than all of the Prix de Rome winners taken together” though he did find the subject of the painting anachronistic. Frédéric Bazille admired the painting and Ernest Chesneau regarded Saint Sebastian, martyr as “the most prodigious piece of execution in the entire salon.” William Crary Brownell described it as “one of the most powerful pictures of modern French art… painted with a vigor and point of realistic detail… peculiar to our time.” As the painting was popular, an etching was made of it for wider publication.
Some people were critical of Ribot’s tendency to produce works that were seen as derivative of pieces by Jusepe de Ribera, and Saint Sebastian, martyr was one such work, both in terms of its theme and its treatment, highly reminiscent of Ribera’s effective use of lighting to create contrast in his canvasses. Maxime Du Camp commented that if the black areas on the canvas got any darker, the picture would become unintelligible.
See also Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene
References