Selene
From Aublet’s debut at the Paris Salon of 1873, his career was celebrated for its diversity and inclusion of nearly every genre type popular in the late nineteenth century. Influenced early by his teacher, Claudius Jacquand, a noted history and genre painter, the young Aublet’s work focused on the seaside French town of Tréport, detailing the bustle of sun-splashed beaches. His later Orientalist compositions were inspired by his frequent travels, some shared with Jean Léon Gérôme and Alberto Pasini in southern Spain, Turkey, North Africa, and Tunisia. The artist was also deeply influenced by the literary circles in which he socialized (Alexandre Dumas was an important patron); most famously, he illustrated stories by Guy de Maupassant, which blended literary realism and elements of the supernatural. Aublet’s brilliant ability to draw upon a wide array of sources to inform his compositions is evident in the remarkable present work--centered on a pale-skinned model floating through a clouded sky, dappled with fading stars, above a landscape of purple mountains and ice-blue waters. While the exact origins of this work have yet to be discovered, an inscription on the frame’s reverse suggest this nubile young woman is the personification of the moon goddess Selene. The goddess was most often depicted in Classical antiquity as a young woman with a pale white face, wearing the moon as a crown, traveling on a chariot drawn by two horses. The Homeric Hymn in her honor describes her as “a radiance from heaven [that"> embraces the earth, and great is the beauty that comes from her shining light. The dark air grows bright.. and her rays fill the sky, when her fair skin is fresh from the waters of the Ocean, and divine Selene… [is"> in the middle of the month, when her great orbit is full and her light is brightest” (as quoted in Jenny March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 1998, p. 353). Aublet’s Selene appears to be at the end of her nightly journey, her back arched, legs and arms wrapped around the slight silhouette of the moon, the sky brightening with the pink hues of the oncoming dawn (brought by her brother Helios). The details of Selene’s romantic exploits with Zeus, Pan, and most famously the shepherd Endymion, fated to sleep forever so his beauty would never fade from her sight, were well known from countless retellings; these informed visual representations by generations of artists from Hans van Aachen (1552-1615) to Anne-Louis Giordet-Trioson (1761-1824) to Charles Edward Hallé. Yet in his work Aublet seems disinterested with narrative conventions, placing his figure in an indiscriminate fantasy realm, allowing the goddess’s well-modeled and finely painted form to inspire the imagination.
