Sacred Grove

Painted in 1884 and now at the Princeton University Art Museum, this unusual work depicting a sacred grove reflects the academic and allegorical subjects Lautrec explored in the studio of Fernand Cormon during his formal training years. Cormon's atelier maintained a rigorous tradition of historical and mythological subjects, and Lautrec engaged seriously with this curriculum even as his true interests lay in the contemporary social world. The sacred grove subject has classical and Symbolist resonances — the shaded wood as a space of mystery and ritual — that connect it to the Symbolist currents running through French art in the mid-1880s.

The woodland composition with filtered light through tree canopies shows Lautrec working within academic conventions of landscape and figure, with the interplay of dappled light and deep shade modelled through tonal gradation. The work is stylistically more traditional than the radical modernity of his mature Montmartre scenes.