Time travel or transmigration of souls? Benoit and his "Last Walks of the King". Artist, critic, art historian Alexander Benois and his graphic work “Walk of King Benois Walk of the King description of the painting

1906 State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.
Paper on cardboard, gouache, watercolor, bronze paint, silver paint, graphite pencil, pen, brush 48 x 62

IN The King's Walk Alexandre Benois takes the viewer to the brilliant Versailles park from the time of Louis XIV.

In the background autumn landscape the artist depicts the solemn procession of the monarch with his courtiers. The flat modeling of the walking figures seems to transform them into ghosts of a bygone era. Among the court retinue, it is difficult to find Louis XIV himself. The artist does not care about the Sun King. Benoit is much more concerned with the atmosphere of the era, the breath of the Versailles park from the time of its crowned owner.

Author of the painting King's Walk Alexander Nikolaevich Benois is one of the organizers and ideological inspirer of the artistic association World of Art. He was a theorist and critic of art. Peru Benoit owns research devoted to the history of both domestic and Western European art. His multifaceted talent manifested itself in book graphics and scenography.

Benoit's pictorial works are mainly devoted to two themes: France during the time of Louis XIV "Sun King" and St. Petersburg XVIII - early XIX century (see "

"Academician Alexandre Benois is a subtle esthete, a wonderful artist, a charming person." A.V. Lunacharsky

World famous Alexander Nikolaevich Benois acquired as a decorator and director of Russian ballets in Paris, but this is only part of the activity of an eternally searching, captivating nature, possessed of irresistible charm and the ability to light up those around him with his necks. Art historian, art critic, editor of two major art magazines “World of Art” and “Apollo”, head of the painting department of the Hermitage and, finally, just a painter.

Himself Benois Alexander Nikolaevich wrote to his son from Paris in 1953 that “... the only one of all the works worthy of outliving me... will probably be a” multi-volume book “ A. Benois remembers“, because “this story about Shurenka is at the same time quite detailed about an entire culture.”

In his memoirs, Benoit calls himself "a product artistic family" Indeed, his father - Nikolai Benois was a famous architect, maternal grandfather of A.K. Kavos was an equally significant architect, the creator of St. Petersburg theaters. Elder brother A.N. Benoit - Albert is a popular watercolorist. With no less success we can say that he was a “product” of an international family. On his father's side he is French, on his mother's side he is Italian, or more precisely Venetian. My family connection with Venice - the city of beautiful decay of once powerful muses - Alexander Nikolaevich Benois felt especially acute. There was Russian blood in him too. The Catholic religion did not interfere with the family's amazing respect for Orthodox Church. One of the strongest childhood impressions of A. Benois is the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral (St. Nicholas of the Sea), a work of the Baroque era, the view of which opened from the windows of the Benois family house. With all of Benoit’s completely understandable cosmopolitanism, there was only one place in the world that he loved with all his soul and considered his homeland - St. Petersburg. In this creation of Peter, who crossed Russia and Europe, he felt “some kind of great, strict force, great predestination.”

That amazing charge of harmony and beauty that A. Benoit received in childhood, helped make his life something like a work of art, amazing in its integrity. This was especially evident in his novel of life. On the threshold of his ninth decade, Benoit admits that he feels very young, and explains this “curiosity” by the fact that the attitude of his adored wife towards him has not changed over time. AND " Memories"He dedicated his to her, " Dear Ate" - Anna Karlovna Benoit (née Kind). Their lives have been connected since they were 16 years old. Atya was the first to share his artistic delights and first creative attempts. She was his muse, sensitive, very cheerful, artistically gifted. Although not a beauty, she seemed irresistible to Benoit with her charming appearance, grace, and lively mind. But the serene happiness of the children in love was to be tested. Tired of their relatives' disapproval, they separated, but the feeling of emptiness did not leave them during the years of separation. And finally, with what joy they met again and got married in 1893.

The couple Benoit there were three children - two daughters: Anna and Elena, and a son, Nikolai, who became a worthy successor to his father’s work, a theater artist who worked a lot in Rome and at the Milan Theater...

A. Benoit is often called “ artist of Versailles" Versailles symbolizes in his work the triumph of art over the chaos of the universe.
This theme determines the originality of Benoit's historical retrospectiveism and the sophistication of his stylization. The first Versailles series appears in 1896 - 1898. She received the name " The last walks of Louis XIV" It includes such famous works as “ The king walked in any weather», « Feeding the fish" Versailles Benoit begins in Peterhof and Oranienbaum, where he spent his childhood years.

Nevertheless, the first impression of Versailles, where he visited for the first time during honeymoon, was stunning. The artist was overcome by the feeling that he had “already experienced this once.” Everywhere in the Versailles works one can see the slightly dejected, but still outstanding personality of Louis XIV, the Sun King. The feeling of the decline of a once majestic culture was extremely consonant with the era of the end of the century when he lived Benoit.

In a more refined form, these ideas were embodied in the second Versailles series of 1906, in the artist’s most famous works: “”, “”, “ Chinese pavilion», « Jealous», « Fantasia on a Versailles theme" The grandiose in them coexists with the curious and exquisitely fragile.

Finally, let us turn to the most significant thing that the artist created in the theater. This is primarily a production of the ballet "" to the music of N. Tcherepnin in 1909 and the ballet " Parsley"to the music of I. Stravinsky from 1911.

In these productions, Benois showed himself not only as a brilliant theater artist, but also as a talented libretto author. These ballets seem to personify two ideals that lived in his soul. "" - embodiment European culture, the Baroque style, its pomp and grandeur, combined with overripeness and withering. In the libretto, which is a free adaptation famous work Torquato Tasso " Liberated Jerusalem", tells about a certain young man, Viscount René de Beaugency, who, while hunting, finds himself in a lost pavilion of an old park, where he is miraculously transported into the world of a living tapestry - the beautiful gardens of Armida. But the spell dissipates, and he, having seen the highest beauty, returns to reality. What remains is the eerie impression of life, forever poisoned by mortal longing for extinct beauty, for fantastic reality. In this magnificent performance, the world of retrospective paintings seems to come to life. Benoit.

IN " Parsley“The Russian theme, the search for an ideal, was embodied people's soul. This production sounded all the more poignant and nostalgic because the booths and their hero Petrushka, so beloved by Benoit, were already becoming a thing of the past. In the play, puppets are animated by the evil will of an old man - a magician: Petrushka is an inanimate character, endowed with all the living qualities that exist in a suffering and spiritualized person; his lady Columbine is a symbol of eternal femininity and the “blackamoor” is rude and undeservedly triumphant. But the end of this puppet drama Benoit sees differently than in an ordinary farce theater.

In 1918, Benois became the head of the Hermitage art gallery and did a lot to ensure that the museum became the largest in the world. At the end of the 20s, the artist left Russia and lived in Paris for almost half a century. He died in 1960 at the age of 90. A few years before his death Benoit writes to his friend I.E. Grabar, to Russia: “And how I would like to be where my eyes were opened to the beauty of life and nature, where I first tasted love. Why am I not at home?! Everyone remembers some pieces of the most modest, but so sweet landscape.”

Versailles. Louis XIV feeding the fish

Description of the old age of Louis XIV (from here):
“...The king became sad and gloomy. According to Madame de Maintenon, he became “the most inconsolable man in all of France.” Louis began to violate the laws of etiquette established by himself.

IN recent years in life he acquired all the habits befitting an old man: he got up late, ate in bed, reclined receiving ministers and secretaries of state (Louis XIV was involved in the affairs of the kingdom until last days his life), and then sat for hours in a large armchair, placing a velvet pillow under his back. In vain the doctors repeated to their sovereign that the lack of bodily movements made him bored and drowsy and was a harbinger of his imminent death.

The king could no longer resist the onset of decrepitude, and his age was approaching eighty.

All he agreed to was limited to trips around the gardens of Versailles in a small, steerable carriage.”



Versailles. By the pool of Ceres

King's Walk

“The source of inspiration for the artist is not the royal splendor of the castle and parks, but rather the “shaky, sad memories of the kings who still roam here.” It looks like some kind of almost mystical illusion (“I sometimes reach a state close to hallucinations”).

For Benoit, those shadows that silently glide across the Versailles park are more akin to memories than fantasy. According to his own statement, images of events that once took place here flash before his eyes. He “sees” the very creator of this splendor, King Louis XIV, surrounded by his retinue. Moreover, he sees him already terribly old and sick, which surprisingly accurately reflects the former reality.”



Versailles. Greenhouse

Versailles. Trianon Garden

From an article by a French researcher:

“The images of “The Last Walks of Louis XIV” are certainly inspired, and sometimes borrowed, from texts and engravings of the time of the “Sun King.”

However, such a view - the approach of an erudite and connoisseur - is by no means fraught with either dryness or pedantry and does not force the artist to engage in lifeless historical reconstructions. Indifferent to the “complaints of the stones, dreaming of decaying into oblivion,” so dear to Montesquieu’s heart, Benoit did not capture either the dilapidation of the palace or the desolation of the park, which he certainly still saw. He prefers flights of fancy to historical accuracy - and at the same time, his fantasies are historically accurate. The artist’s themes are the passage of time, the “romantic” invasion of nature into the classic Le Nôtre park; he is fascinated – and amused – by the contrast between the sophistication of the park scenery, in which “every line, every statue, the smallest vase” recalls “the divinity of monarchical power, the greatness of the sun king, the inviolability of the foundations” - and the grotesque figure of the king himself: a hunched old man in a gurney pushed by a livery footman.”




At Curtius

Allegory of the River

Allegory of the River

A few years later Benoit would paint an equally irreverent verbal portrait Louis XIV: “a gnarled old man with sagging cheeks, bad teeth and a face eaten away by smallpox.”

The king in Benoit's "Walks" is a lonely old man, abandoned by his courtiers and clinging to his confessor in a premonition near death. But he doesn’t act in the role tragic hero, and in the role of a staff character, an extra, whose almost ephemeral, ghostly presence emphasizes the inviolability of the scenery and the stage from which one leaves great actor, “uncomplainingly bore the burden of this monstrous comedy.”



The king walked in any weather... (Saint-Simon)

At the same time, Benoit seems to forget that Louis XIV was the main customer of the Versailles performance and was not at all mistaken about the role that he assigned himself to play. Since history was presented to Benoit as a kind of theatrical play, the replacement of bright mise-en-scenes with less successful ones was inevitable: “Louis XIV was an excellent actor, and he deserved the applause of history. Louis XVI was only one of the “grandsons of the great actor” who got on stage - and therefore it is very natural that he was driven out by the audience, and the play, which had recently had enormous success, also failed.”


... the worst thing is that Mr. Benoit, following the example of many, chose a special specialty for himself. It is now very common among painters and young poets to find and protect their original individuality by choosing some, sometimes ridiculously narrow and deliberate, type of subject. Mr. Benois took a fancy to the Versailles park. A thousand and one studies of the Park of Versailles, all more or less well done. And still I want to say: “Strike once, strike twice, but you can’t make me feel insensitive.” For Mr. Benois caused a kind of special mental stupor in the public: Versailles ceased to act. “How good!” - says the audience and yawns widely, widely.

Benois Alexander Nikolaevich (1870-1960) graphic artist, painter, theater artist, publisher, writer, one of the authors modern image books. Representative of Russian Art Nouveau.

Versailles.

A post about the work of Alexander Benois has already been published in our community:

We bring to your attention a few more watercolors by this wonderful artist.

Versailles.

Paris. Karruzel.

Versailles. Versailles.

Versailles. Versailles.

Fountain "Neptune" in Versailles. Versailles.

Fontainebleau.

Villa Maurel, Cassis.

Pont Marie, Paris.

Capitol, Rome. Le Capitole, Rome.

Ufficio Scavi, Rome.

Pavlovsk.

Venice. Venice.

Palace by moonlight. (Gouache, paper)

Cassis. Cassis.

Cassis. (Grove in Cassis).

The King's Walk.

Chinese pavilion in Tsarskoe Selo. (watercolor on paper. 23 x 25.5 cm).

Image source:

From the comments to the post:

".....Benoit has long held me captive with his sophistication. I cannot ignore not only the post about him, but also some of his minor watercolors, exhibited to maintain the prestige and status of the exhibition. Attracts the eye, attracts the mind, attracts the essence. What a misfortune this is: clinging to Benoit for life! It’s already the 21st century, and it’s a gift that the founder of a community, as we would say now, is so horribly formalized in content, and stormy (with beatings, affairs, scandals and quarrels) in essence. What captivates me so much? Calligraphic precision of detail? Color scheme, muted and aristocratic? Absence of fuss and flickering in the skill, in the hand? Visible education, hanging outside the boundaries of work? Longing for an unprecedented and untried era? Samples of French parks, lined and trimmed, living as phantoms in his watercolors? An axiom learned from childhood: he could see something partially preserved, but you wouldn’t even think of it, because you’d never see it? Envy of his scenery and costumes made for Diaghilev, no matter how much you leaf through the elite edition of Diaghilev’s seasons - you won’t touch it, you won’t understand the delicate but deafening effect? What makes me, all my life, thoughtfully stop near these coldish sheets of high-quality paper, hidden under glass, noting that it was displayed there, but there is nothing there and there was nothing there? Can there be a landscape without a person? How good is a landscape without a person, from whom there is only trouble and destruction of the harmony verified by classical standards? I don't know, I don't know. But I look, I look...."

A. N. Benois was born into the family of a famous architect and grew up in an atmosphere of reverence for art, but did not receive an art education. He studied at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University (1890-94), but at the same time independently studied the history of art and was engaged in drawing and painting (mainly watercolors). He did this so thoroughly that he was able to write a chapter on Russian art for the third volume of “The History of Painting in the 19th Century” by R. Muter, published in 1894.

They immediately started talking about him as a talented art critic who upended established ideas about development Russian art. In 1897, based on impressions from trips to France, he created his first serious work - a series of watercolors "The Last Walks of Louis XIV", showing himself in it to be an original artist.

Repeated trips to Italy and France and copying artistic treasures there, studying the works of Saint-Simon, Western literature of the 17th-19th centuries, interest in ancient engravings were the foundation of his artistic education. In 1893, Benoit acted as a landscape painter, creating watercolors of the environs of St. Petersburg. In 1897-1898, he painted a series of landscape paintings of the Versailles parks in watercolors and gouache, recreating in them the spirit and atmosphere of antiquity.

Towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Benoit again returned to the landscapes of Peterhof, Oranienbaum, and Pavlovsk. It glorifies beauty and grandeur architecture XVIII V. The artist is interested in nature mainly in its connection with history. Possessing a pedagogical gift and erudition, he late XIX V. organized the World of Art association, becoming its theoretician and inspirer. He worked a lot in book graphics. He often appeared in print and published his “Artistic Letters” (1908-16) every week in the newspaper “Rech”.

He worked no less fruitfully as an art historian: he published the widely known book “Russian Painting in the 19th Century” in two editions (1901, 1902), significantly revising his early essay for it; began publishing serial publications "Russian School of Painting" and "History of Painting of All Times and Peoples" (1910-17; publication was interrupted with the beginning of the revolution) and the magazine " Artistic treasures Russia"; created the wonderful "Guide to the Hermitage Art Gallery" (1911).

After the revolution of 1917, Benoit took an active part in the work of various organizations related mainly to the protection of monuments of art and antiquity, and from 1918 he also took up museum work - he became the head of Art gallery Hermitage. He developed and successfully implemented a completely new plan for the general exhibition of the museum, which contributed to the most expressive demonstration of each work.

At the beginning of the 20th century. Benois illustrates the works of Pushkin A.S. Acts as a critic and art historian. In the 1910s, people became the center of the artist’s interests. This is his painting “Peter I on a walk in Summer Garden", where the appearance of past life, seen through the eyes of a contemporary.

History decisively predominated in the work of Benoit the artist. Two topics invariably attracted his attention: “Petersburg XVIII - early XIX centuries.” and "France of Louis XIV". He addressed them primarily in his historical compositions - in two “Versailles series” (1897, 1905-06), in widely famous paintings“Parade under Paul I” (1907), “Catherine II’s entrance in the Tsarskoye Selo Palace” (1907), etc., reproducing a long-gone life with deep knowledge and a subtle sense of style. His numerous natural landscapes, which he usually executed either in St. Petersburg and its suburbs, or in Versailles (Benoit regularly traveled to France and lived there for a long time), were essentially devoted to the same themes. Into Russian history book graphics the artist entered with his book “The ABC in the Paintings of Alexandre Benois” (1905) and illustrations for “The Queen of Spades” by A. S. Pushkin, executed in two versions (1899, 1910), as well as wonderful illustrations for “ To the Bronze Horseman", to three versions of which he devoted almost twenty years of work (1903-22).

During these same years, he took part in the design of the “Russian Seasons”, organized by S.P. Diaghilev. in Paris, which included in their program not only opera and ballet performances, but also symphony concerts.

Benois designed R. Wagner's opera "Twilight of the Gods" on stage Mariinsky Theater and after that he performed sketches of the scenery for N. N. Tcherepnin’s ballet “Armida’s Pavilion” (1903), the libretto of which he composed himself. The passion for ballet turned out to be so strong that, on Benois’ initiative and with his direct participation, a private ballet troupe, which began triumphant performances in Paris in 1909 - “Russian Seasons”. Benois, who took over the post of artistic director in the troupe, performed the designs for several performances.

One of his highest achievements was the scenery for I. F. Stravinsky's ballet "Petrushka" (1911). Soon Benois began collaborating with the Moscow Art Theater, where he successfully designed two performances based on the plays of J.-B. Moliere (1913) and for some time even participated in the management of the theater along with K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

From 1926 he lived in Paris, where he died. The artist's main works: "The King's Walk" (1906), "Fantasy on the Versailles Theme" (1906), " Italian comedy"(1906), illustrations for the Bronze Horseman by A.S. Pushkin (1903) and others.

The series of drawings by Alexandre Benois, dedicated to the walks of King Louis the Sun, his old age, as well as autumn and winter in the Park of Versailles, is perhaps one of the most memorable - both sad and beautiful - in the artist’s work.

A. Benoit. "The King's Last Walks" 1896-1898 (there are also later drawings)

"Versailles. Louis XIV feeding the fish"

Description of Louis XIV's old age from here:
"...The king became sad and gloomy. According to Madame de Maintenon, he became “the most inconsolable man in all of France.” Louis began to violate the laws of etiquette established by himself.
In the last years of his life, he acquired all the habits befitting an old man: he got up late, ate in bed, reclined to receive ministers and secretaries of state (Louis XIV was involved in the affairs of the kingdom until the last days of his life), and then sat for hours in a large armchair, placing a velvet blanket under his back. pillow. In vain the doctors repeated to their sovereign that the lack of bodily movements made him bored and drowsy and was a harbinger of his imminent death.
The king could no longer resist the onset of decrepitude, and his age was approaching eighty.
All he agreed to was limited to trips around the gardens of Versailles in a small, steerable carriage."

"Versailles. At the Pool of Ceres"

I'm also putting others here drawings by Benoit, in which the king does not appear, but there is simply Versailles.
"Flora's Pool at Versailles"

From the article "Versailles in the works of Benois"

Alexandre Benois first visited Versailles as a young man, back in the 1890s.
Since then, he has remained obsessed with the poetry of the ancient royal palace, “the divine Versailles,” as he himself calls it. “I returned from there stupefied, almost sick from strong impressions.”

From the confession to his nephew Evgeniy Lancera: “I am intoxicated by this place, it is some kind of impossible disease, a criminal passion, a strange love.”

"King Louis XIV in a chair"

Over the course of his life, the artist would create more than six hundred oil paintings, engravings, pastels, gouaches and watercolors dedicated to Versailles.
When Benoit was 86 years old, he complained about poor health only from the point of view that it did not allow him to “walk through the paradise in which he once lived.”

And this is the real one lifetime portrait old Louis the Sun, drawn by A. Benois. Not by our artist, but by Antoine Benoist (1632-1717), who worked at court. He was not a relative of our Benoit, and not even a namesake (different spelling), but I am sure that such a clever person as Alexander knew about him and perhaps felt some kind of spiritual kinship thanks to the magic of the name.

"The King's Walk"

“The source of inspiration for the artist is not the royal splendor of the castle and parks, but rather the “shaky, sad memories of the kings who still wander here.” It looks like some kind of almost mystical illusion (“I sometimes reach a state close to hallucinations”) .
For Benoit, those shadows that silently glide across the Versailles park are more akin to memories than fantasy. According to his own statement, images of events that once took place here flash before his eyes. He “sees” the very creator of this splendor, King Louis XIV, surrounded by his retinue. Moreover, he sees him already terribly old and sick, which surprisingly accurately reflects the former reality.”

"Versailles. Orangery"

"Versailles. Trianon Garden"

From an article by a French researcher (there’s an interesting perspective there):

“The images of “The Last Walks of Louis XIV” are certainly inspired, and sometimes borrowed, from texts and engravings of the time of the “Sun King”.
However, such a view - the approach of an erudite and connoisseur - is by no means fraught with either dryness or pedantry and does not force the artist to engage in lifeless historical reconstructions. Indifferent to the “complaints of the stones, dreaming of decaying into oblivion,” so dear to Montesquieu’s heart, Benoit did not capture either the dilapidation of the palace or the desolation of the park, which he certainly still saw. He prefers flights of fancy to historical accuracy - and at the same time, his fantasies are historically accurate. The artist’s themes are the passage of time, the “romantic” invasion of nature into the classic Le Nôtre park; he is fascinated – and amused – by the contrast between the sophistication of the park scenery, in which “every line, every statue, the smallest vase” recalls “the divinity of monarchical power, the greatness of the sun king, the inviolability of the foundations” - and the grotesque figure of the king himself: a hunched old man in a gurney pushed by a livery footman."

"At Curtius's"

"Allegory of the River"

“A few years later, Benoit would paint an equally irreverent verbal portrait of Louis XIV: “a crooked old man with sagging cheeks, bad teeth and a face eaten away by smallpox.”
The king in Benoit's "Walks" is a lonely old man, abandoned by his courtiers and clinging to his confessor in anticipation of imminent death. But he appears rather not in the role of a tragic hero, but in the role of a staff character, an extra, whose almost ephemeral, ghostly presence emphasizes the inviolability of the scenery and the stage from which the once great actor leaves, “without a murmur the burden of this monstrous comedy.”

"The king walked in any weather... (Saint-Simon)"

“At the same time, Benoit seems to forget that Louis XIV was the main customer of the Versailles performance and was not at all mistaken about the role that he assigned himself to play. Since the story seemed to Benoit as a kind of theatrical play, the replacement of bright mise-en-scenes with less successful ones was inevitable: “Louis XIV was an excellent actor, and he deserved the applause of history. Louis XVI was only one of the “grandsons of the great actor” who got on the stage - and therefore it is very natural that he was driven out by the audience, and the play, which had recently had enormous success, also failed. ".

"Allegory of the River"

"King" (not in the chair yet)

"A Walk in the Garden of Versailles"

"Pond at Versailles"

"Fantasy on the Versailles Theme"

Anatoly Lunacharsky, the future Soviet “Minister of Culture,” swore at the cycle when he saw the drawings at an exhibition in 1907:
... the worst thing is that Mr. Benoit, following the example of many, chose a special specialty for himself. It is now very common among painters and young poets to find and protect their original individuality by choosing some, sometimes ridiculously narrow and deliberate, type of subject. Mr. Benois took a fancy to the Versailles park. A thousand and one studies of the Park of Versailles, all more or less well done. And still I want to say: “Strike once, strike twice, but you can’t make it insensible.” For Mr. Benois caused a kind of special mental stupor in the public: Versailles ceased to act. "How good!" - says the audience and yawns widely, widely.