''Man Between Vice and Virtue'' (french: L'homme entre le vice et la virtue) is an 1892

symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

painting by Henri Martin. The painting is currently housed in le

Musée des Augustins The Musée des Augustins de Toulouse is a fine arts museum in Toulouse, France which conserves a collection of sculpture and paintings from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. The paintings are from throughout France, the sculptures represe ...

, in Toulouse, France.

Description

Against the backdrop of a desert landscape, a naked man appears to advance towards a floating female figure clothed in a virginal white dress that emanates in the right portion of the painting. The man in the painting is followed by a group of women clothed in transparent flowery attire. The group seems to dance and sing in order to attract his attention. In the center of the group is a woman in black dress with peacock feathers and butterfly wings, which symbolize vice in its many forms. The work is signed "Henri Martin 92" in the lower right corner.

History

Martin adopted a

divisionist Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically..Homer, William I. ''Seurat and the Science of ...

(pointillist) technique upon returning to Paris from Italy in the 1880s His style was slowly transitioning from realism. This work in particular is unusual because of the realist portrayal of the man's body.

References

{{Reflist, 2 1892 paintings Symbolist paintings Collections of the Musée des Augustins Dance in art Fairies in art Sun in art