Pastel on paper
30 x 42.5 cm, framed 43.5 x 57.2 cm
Signed lower left
There is something enchanting and beguiling about the mystery and stillness in this scene. A sensuality and intimacy to it, reinforced by the interplay between the dog and cat. It has the air and rich emotion of Symbolism and brings to mind the smoky nocturnes of Fernand Khnopff and Henri Le Sidaner. Often set in the gardens and environs of large country houses, Alleaume’s settings are dream-like and uncanny, as if taking place in a parallel world. Within them frequently a man, wearing black, courts a woman, wearing white, both in 18th century attire. Here he has replaced them with a dog and cat to create further symbolic implications. The cat usually associated with sensuality and seduction can also represent deceit, whereas dogs loyalty and protection, so while it appears she is being pursued by an overly zealous pooch she is perhaps the seductress, a female fatale figure. Adding to the rich symbology and peculiar sentiment there is the erroneous shadow of another dog (where the left column’s shadow should be).
Ludovic Alleaume worked predominatingly in France as an academic artist but one who engaged with the new and significant movements of his day, from Orientalism to Art Nouveau and Symbolism. He studied originally in his native Angers and at the age of 18 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his teachers were Ernest Hebert and Luc-Olivier Merson. In 1888 and 1890 he visited and stayed in Palestine, resulting in an Orientalism in his oeuvre. He exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français between 1883 and 1938 and won second class medal for painting in 1905. Alleaume exhibited too at the Salon des Humoristes and the Salon d'Hiver. He painted numerous compositions of Biblical subjects, murals for several churches and cartoons for the stained glass windows of the Chapel of Our Lady in Val-d'Or, near St-Cloud.
