Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

Eloise Fox

Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, or Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a tone poem composed for orchestra in 1894. It was premiered in Paris on December 22, 1894, by the Société Nationale de Musique. The performance was conducted by Gustave Doret and the flautist was Georges Barrère. The piece was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1876 poem L’aprèsmidi d’un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun), which is a symbolist poem in the form of a hazy stream-of-consciousness monologue, colored by the Faun’s dream-like state and the heat of the afternoon sun.

I believe that Debussy's music has elements of both impressionist and symbolist styles. The main theme of the piece, voiced through the flute, is a descending and rising scale pattern symbolic of the Faun. It captures the Faun’s physical, emotional, and mental states, acting as a symbol. However, it also captures the lush, rolling scenery and the heat and light which floods the scene, functioning in an impressionist way to create atmosphere. The argument can also be made that, while symbols transfer from the poem, the act of trying to capture the essence of the poem is inherently impressionist.

For my project I decided to do a digital oil painting using Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun as the subject. I wanted to capture the duality of the symbolist and impressionist styles in my interpretation. As a result, I ended up with several different artists acting as stylistic influences. The symbolist component of this work is reflected in the painting’s composition and was influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ 1872 painting Hope. This is the only painting of the ones I referenced which I have not seen in person. In this painting I noticed the use of specific components as symbols, making them somewhat isolated from each other. I tried to reflect this in my painting by separating individual components such as the faun, the tree, the sky, the hills, etc. These components still work together and create a cohesive image but are also distinctly individual. I tried to differentiate between different elements by using varying textures and painting them on separate layers, so the boarders stayed clear. To counterbalance this, I tried to somewhat unite the piece through my choice of color-palette, using a little bit of yellow in every area to indicate the light and heat of the afternoon sun. This appears as a dryness in the of the hills and field, in the beams sunlight which are visibly reflected on the tree leaves, and the pale shades of blue in the sky which are mixed with streaks of pale yellow. I also added a single rose in the bottom right corner of my painting because roses are a repeatedly mentioned symbol in Mallarme’s original poem and as a reference to the symbolic flowers which are present in Chavannes’ Hope.

My primary stylistic influence was Vincent Van Gogh. The use of texture in his paintings is something that speaks to me and which I wanted to incorporate. The first time I saw Starry Night, the most striking thing to me was the three dimensionality of the painting. The paint isn’t smooth. In some places it comes off the canvas and in others the canvas is bare. This was something I wanted to incorporate, but I was limited by my medium. Digital oil paint gives some texture to the paint which can be seen in the way the colors blend, interact, and layer with each other, but the canvas is ultimately flat, and the paint cannot come off the page. I compensated by using different brushes to get different textures: a smooth brush for the softer areas of the painting like the leaves of the trees and the sky, and a short brush for the area where I wanted streaks of paint and lots of layers of colors including the trunk of the tree, the hills, and the field. The short brush in particular helped me achieve greater layers of texture. The tree trunk was the first area I painted, and it was inspired by the tower in Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889). I wanted to capture the movement and contour of the structure through the twists and curves in the lines which composed it. As the painting progressed, I decided to lean into the texture of The Starry Night more and decided that I wanted the canvas to show. This is mainly visible in the hills and fields, which were the last sections I painted. The other paintings by Van Gogh which I referenced were his 1889 paintings Cypresses and Wheat Field with Cypresses. The Cypress trees in these paintings influence the leaves of the trees in both the texture of shapes and the color texture. These paintings also influenced the movement in the sky and the fields.

The other two painters who influenced my painting were Monet and Manet. I visited the Manet/Degas exhibit and the Impressionist wing at the Met as part of my preparation for this project. This particular painting, The Escape from Rochefort, captured my attention because of the way Manet uses texture to communicate distance in the water. I tried to use this to communicate distance in the hills and field, however, I don’t think it translated as clearly as I would have liked. The textures and lines in the foreground are bigger and more distinct than in the more distant hill, but not to the same degree as Manet’s Ocean. In Monet’s painting The Parc Monceau, Monet captures a scene which takes place under the shadow of an arch of trees. He distinguishes the areas where light filters through the leaves as highlights rather than shadows, using light colors of paint. This striking reversal of expectations captures and characterizes the light, bringing emphasis to it. This use of highlight is most apparent in the grass in the foreground of the painting. This grass was an inspiration for the texture and color combination of the leaves of the trees in my painting as I also tried to capture a mix of color and light.

Debussy’s Prelude to the afternoon of a Faun had a significant historical impact. His experiments with different types of scales pushed the limits of audience’s perceptions of tonality and set the stage for 20th century music. It was regarded by Boulez as the first piece of modern music; he remarked “the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music” and that through this piece “modern music was awakened”. The Impressionist and Symbolist movements transformed art in a similar way. Previous artistic styles had focused mainly on capturing a scene in accurate detail or the drama of a particular moment. Symbolists drew focus to individual elements of a painting as symbols, which then transformed the meaning of the work as a whole. Impressionists focused on capturing light and the essence of a scene through color and texture. These shifts away from the traditional interpretations of the subject are what eventually lead to abstract art and other movements which deviated from conventional styles.

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