“Three Women and Three Wolves”
‘Tis the season and I found this wonderful piece to share with you all.
“Three Women and Three Wolves” (“Trois Femmes et Trois Loups”) is a watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper piece by the Swiss artist, Eugène Grasset. It was made in 1892. Grasset was part of the Art Nouveau movement that came out during the Belle Époque period. He was highly influential on a number of artists including Paul Berthon, who was one of his students, and Alphonse Mucha, and Louis Rhead, who were exposed to his poster art.
In this piece, three ghostly women float through the trees. One woman looks directly at the viewer. They are dressed in sheer robes which appear as if floating on the wind. Three black wolves peer out from behind the trees. The first two wolves sit and look at the viewer, while the one in the back stands and looks to the side. A brass horn lays mysteriously in the foreground on the forest floor. The wolves appear almost as companions to the women, who look as if they are caught in some secretive activity.
The wooded landscape that Grasset portrays is quite beautiful. The trees are a russet brown. Their barks are creatively decorated, each with its own pattern. The forest floor is covered in pale green-blue foliage of ferns and grasses. Grasset’s initials are delicately written in the lower right corner.
This was a period of time known as dark romanticism which came out in opposition to the enlightenment period. Artists explored the darker and more fantastical side of human nature, and their close and often strange relationships with the natural world. Grasset follows a similar theme here and suggests some macabre activity taking place in the woods. One that is fantastical, allowing the women to float upon the air. They have close relationships with nature, as the tameness of the wolves imply. There is a blurring between natural reality and the fantastical.
“Three Women and Three Wolves” is currently in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France.
For more on Eugène Grasset, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
Another BEAUTIFUL image by an artist I didn’t know. This blog is my favorite of all the ones I follow. Thank you, Heather!
Thank you so much! You always leave such insightful comments, so I really appreciate you as well. 🙂 This was an artist whose name popped up often when researching other artists and when I saw this piece, I knew I had to get to him before Halloween. Learning about one artist introduces me to at least three I didn’t know before, so it’s been a fun web of discovery for me!