The Sack of a Gallo-Roman Villa by the Huns

Trained under Alfred Dehodencq and subsequently at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, Georges Rochegrosse established himself from his first Salon appearances as one of the foremost painters of history subjects. His large, theatrically charged compositions reveal an uncompromising taste for the expressive power of pictorial narrative, placing him among the most distinctive painters of the late nineteenth century.

This canvas is a variant of the work exhibited at the Salon of 1893 and reproduced in the illustrated catalogue. Working at a concentrated scale, Rochegrosse compresses the drama of a monumental fresco: the ferocity of the Hunnic warriors erupts into the elegance of a Gallo-Roman villa, as light sculpts the figures and throws into relief the contrast between threatened beauty and destructive force. The painting was shown at the Exposition artistique bourbonnaise in Moulins in 1925 and bears on the reverse the inscription "Appartient à Melle Teyssier de Rauschenberg".