Nicolas Auguste Laurens

Nicolas-Auguste Laurens exhibited twice the present painting, five years apart, first in Paris and then in Dijon. During its first exhibition, at the 1887 Paris Salon, Ariadne Abandoned particularly caught the audience's attention.

The naked figure bears no mythological attributes. Ariane sits on a rocky promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The sky darkens subtly, increasing the waves agitation. The body of the brave woman is painted in very delicate tones. The description of her flesh is remarkable. The blurry surface of the fur on which Ariane is seated, the rough surface of the rock and of the climbing bramble in the lower left, accentuate the soft contours of the female figure.

In 1887, it was hard to miss the painting by Nicolas-Auguste Laurens hung in room n°5 at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in the Palais des Champs-Elysées. The impact of the image was so important that two caricaturists seized on it to make people laugh. Two versions of Ariadne caricatured were published in newspapers. Louis Pierre Gabriel Bernard Morel-Retz, known as Stop, made fun of the resigned and lonely character despite her forsaken by Theseus subtitling his drawing in the Journal amusant: "Ariane having been able to save from the shipwreck of her virtue only a square pillow and her bedside rug." As for the novelist Gyp, she associated in an imaginary conversation the pensive figure of Ariadne with Mary Magdalena renouncing the vanities of the world. Finally, the painting became famous until today thanks to its engraved version by Charles Gillot published in the illustrated catalog of the Salon.

Ariadne Abandoned was also very much successful because of the woman who modeled for Nicolas-Auguste Laurens. Her red hair, her white skin, her magnificent eyes and her body line are recognizable. She was easily identified with Marie Roger (or Royer) known as Sarah Brown.1 At 18 years old, the young woman started modeling for painters and met a dazzling success in Parisian artists' studios. The same year, she was the model for the portrait of the poet Clémence Isaurepainted by Jules Lefebvre and exhibited at the Cercle artistique et littéraire de la rue Volney, and for Salon paintings. Apart from: Ariane abandonnée by Laurens, she posed for Sauvageonne (n°1221) by Léon-Auguste-César Hodebert, and for a portrait pastel by Lucien Doucet (n°2837).