Pablo Tillac (1880-1969) - Illustrations For Soir De Bataille

Pablo TILLAC (1880-1969) Illustrations for Soir de Bataille,
after José-Maria de Heredia Pair of gouaches on paper, signed top right 27.5 x 33 cm each

These two compositions illustrate an episode from the poem Soir de Bataille taken from the collection Les Trophées (1893) by José-Maria de Heredia. In a scene inspired by antiquity, we can see a Roman Imperator haranguing his troops and leading the charge. The Latin inscriptions and the calligraphic cartouche take up the visual vocabulary of illuminated manuscripts and accentuate the narrative dimension. Heredia's verses appear in one of the plates, integrated into the layout.

"The shock had been very harsh.
The tribunes and the centurions, rallying the cohorts,
still inhaled in the air where their strong voices
vibrated the heat of the carnage and its acrid perfumes.

With a dull eye, counting their dead companions,
the soldiers watched, like dead leaves,
in the distance, the archers of Phraortes whirling;
and sweat flowed from their brown faces.

It was then that appeared, all bristling with arrows,
red with the vermilion flow of his fresh wounds,
under the floating purple and the gleaming bronze,

to the din of the bugles which sounded their fanfare,
superb, mastering his frightened horse,
against the flaming sky, the bloody Imperator."

Provenance: Pierre Minvielle Collection, author of Pablo Tillac, the portraitist of the Basques, ed. Atlantica, Biarritz, 2013. Described pp. 84-86.

These gouaches belong to a set created by Tillac around the work of Heredia, also including illustrations for Antony and Cleopatra and La Trebbia.