069

  • Burial of Atala

  • After 1808 painting, n.d.
  • After or by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French 1767-1824)
  • Oil on canvas
  • 48.9 x 66.1 cm., 19-1/4 x 26"
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase with Gift of Adam J. DeSimone and David A. DeSimone with Framing Assistance from Lisa M. Jacobson '92, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2005.18

Essay by Taddy R. Kalas, Professor of French

Originally a pupil of the Neoclassicist and Revolutionary painter Jacques Louis David (web gallery 54), Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson diverged early and dramatically from the work and politics of his mentor (Antal 19). This work is an especially interesting transitional piece. We can still see some striking links to David's Neoclassicism in the anatomically detailed and idealized vision of the human body, the sense of wet drapery in the elegant lines of the figures' "poor" clothing, and the contemplative facial expressions of the dead girl and even of her bereft lover.

Artistically innovative but politically conservative, Girodet was attracted by the emotional neo-Catholicism of early Romantic writers like François-René de Chateaubriand. While previous paintings, notably his 1806 Flood, suggest links to Chateaubriand by their extravagant "natural" settings and emotionally charged subject matter (Antal 22), this painting is an explicit reference to one of Chateaubriand's most famous works, his novella Atala. Set in a still appealingly wild North America and peopled with Christianized Native Americans who become star-crossed lovers, Atala had all the elements that would seize the imagination of that first generation of Romantics: an exotic setting and cast of characters, an idealized vision of "primitive" humanity, and a tragic love story laced with religious mysticism.

Girodet's painting is a somewhat free interpretation of one of the closing scenes of the novella: the burial of the heroine, Atala, who has committed suicide rather than give in to her passion for the young hero, and has learned too late from the hermit priest that the vow of chastity she took on her mother's deathbed was not required of her by God. Although Chateaubriand describes other scenes from Atala's final hours in great detail, he tells us of her burial only that he and the hermit "carried the beautiful one to her earthen bed" (Chateaubriand 74). Girodet's envisioning of the scene, in which the young Chactas is seen desperately clutching Atala's legs rather than actually assisting in the burial, is certainly true to the spirit of the character, who is portrayed throughout the tale as more passionate than functional.