Eugenie Servières paints the Romantic Orientalism of Sophie Cottin

Margrave, Christie 2022. Eugenie Servières paints the Romantic Orientalism of Sophie Cottin. [Online]. European Romanticisms in Association. Available at: https://www.euromanticism.org/eugenie-servieres-pa...

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Abstract

In early nineteenth-century France, Eugénie Servières ‘took to painting medieval themes under the influence of romanticism’ (Handley, p.29). Although Servières is little-known, more than one of her paintings interact with the work of one of the most popular novelists of the era: Sophie Cottin. Given Servières’s taste, it is unsurprising that she was inspired by Cottin’s Mathilde ou mémoires tirés de l’histoire des croisades (1805), which is replete with examples of early French Romantic Medievalist imagery. Painted in 1820, this painting, entitled Maleck-Adhel [sic] attendant Mathilde au tombeau de Josselin de Montmorency, was the second of Servières’s paintings to be inspired by Mathilde. Here, she chooses to focus on two particular Romantic tropes: Orientalism and death. In so doing, she emphasises Cottin’s own juxtaposition of these two common features of Romantic texts and images, both representative of the ‘au-delà’, within Mathilde. Servières depicts the scene which takes place at the tomb of Montmorency, and several features of the image aid the reader to unlock the power Cottin attributes to this scene and its spatial setting.

Item Type:	Website Content
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	European Romanticisms in Association
Date of Acceptance:	January 2022
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2024 12:49
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171149

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