The Triumph of Bacchus

Celebrated for his trompe l'oeil imitations of bas-reliefs, Piat Joseph Sauvage was born in Tournai. After training in Antwerp with the grisaille painter Martin Joseph Geeraerts (1707–1791), he exhibited in Paris in 1774 at the Académie de Saint-Luc. He was also admitted to the academies of Toulouse (1774) and Lille (1776), and in 1783 became a full member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Sauvage's painted reliefs—which imitate sculptures in marble, stone, terracotta, and bronze—were prized: he received commissions for the palaces of Versailles (1781–87), Bellevue (1785), Fontainebleau (1785–86), and Compiègne (1785–89). With the advent of the Revolution he proclaimed Republican sentiments and commanded a National Guard battalion in 1795. He exhibited regularly from 1781 onward and then returned to Tournai, as director of the local academy.

This Triumph of Bacchus is one of at least three versions of the subject by or after Sauvage; The Met also owns a larger, signed picture (07.225.272). Here the composition has been simplified. Two figures have been omitted and there is less detail.

Katharine Baetjer and Francesca Whitlum-Cooper 2010

[Georges Hoentschel, Paris, until 1906; sold to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1906)

Old Master Paintings. Sotheby's, New York. May 27, 2004, p. 70, under no. 40.

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 304–5, no. 105, ill. (color).