Louis Anquetin, 'Two Studies for 'The Three Graces'', about 1899

Louis Anquetin was a talented painter, printmaker and decorative artist. In the 1880s he was part of the avant-garde in Paris. Later in life he was influenced by the old masters, in particular Flemish seventeenth-century painting. These two studies owe a great deal to the work of Peter Paul Rubens. He was one of the leading Flemish artists in the seventeenth century.

Anquetin arrived in Paris in 1882 from his hometown of Rouen. He studied fine art at the Atelier Corman. There he met Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and the Australian John Russell. A photograph taken in about 1884 shows all four of the young men in a group of students clustered around one of their teachers.

Together they began to produce works that searched for new ways to express themselves – ones that did not require a literal representation of the external world. Anquetin and Bernard were influenced by stained-glass windows and Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), as well as the linear planes of the work of Paul Cezanne. They began to develop a painting style that used black lines to enclose flat areas of colour. The style was given the name Cloisonnism by an art critic when their work was shown in 1888. This approach had strong affinities to the Synthetic experiments of Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier. It was also briefly adopted by Van Gogh in Arles.

After being at the forefront of modern art, Anquetin ‘turned against modern art and modelled himself upon the Old Masters’. It is also possible that his increasing interest in scenes from classical mythology drew him to Baroque artists such as Rubens.

The influence of Rubens on Anquetin’s work can be seen in these two studies. The position of the three women bears strong similarities to Rubens’s Three Graces now in the Prado in Madrid.

The studies are for a life-size painting. This was originally intended to form part of four panels to decorate a room in Anquetin’s parents’ house in Etrepagny. Only one of the four panels was produced. It followed the left-hand study very closely. It was loaned to the National Gallery from the Tate in 1997.