Pair Of Symbolist Paintings With Faun And Nymph - émile Eugène Nourigat (early XX Cen.)

Pair of Symbolist paintings with faun and nymph

Pair of oils on panel, 18 x 23 cm.
In both at lower right monogram “e.n,” in the second almost illegible signature at lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Florence.

These two small paintings with symbolist subject matter were made recalling the unmistakable style of the great painter Gustave Moreau.
Indeed, Nourigat himself, as traceable in various records had the opportunity to attend the very last classes of the French master, who after a long illness due to the complications of a stomach tumor died on April 18, 1898, the date of his admission to the class of the Symbolist master curiously makes Nourigat, as shown in the records of the École des beaux-arts, the last pupil in chronological order of Moreau.
Despite the short time shared in the professor-pupil relationship, these two works by Nourigat testify to the extent to which our painter was influenced by the first great Symbolist artist from beyond the Alps.

In a lacustrine, desolate moorland of acid, hallucinatory hues we see in both paintings a nymph and a faun; in the first the faun spies on the beautiful nymph by a lake, in the second after revealing himself he clings to the nymph in an attempt to seduce her. Both the choice of mythological subject and the choice of the rawness of the landscape are clear references to Gustave Moreau.