Catalogue entry

• Figure composition: 
  • centaur(s) »
  • faun »
  • female »
  • music »
  • mythological »
  • nude »
  • nymph »
• Landscape: 
  • forest »
  • fern »
• Inspiration: 
  • Debussy, Claude »
  • L'après-midi d'un faune »
  • Mallarmé, Stéphane »
• Object: 
  • harp »

"Gare de Lyon, départ 8h.38 pour Montereau. Brouillard./ Philippe vient me chercher en auto et nous partons à/ Thoury./ Dans l’Atelier de Philippe, ses nouvelles œuvres:/ ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ à gauche le faune d’un beau/ dessin et de couleur dorée, à droite femme de dos se baignant./ Au centre un centaure, la forêt aux tons profonds,/ caractère moins déformé que ses premières œuvres -/ Qualité de peinture, harmonie, force. […]" (Gare de Lyon departure 8:38 to Montereau. Fog. Philippe comes to fetch me in a car and we leave for Thoury. In Philippe's studio, his new works: … ‘The afternoon of a Faun’, on the left the faun, beautifully drawn and of golden colour, on the right, a woman bathing seen from behind. In the center a centaur, the forest is in deep tones, style less distorted than his early works. Painting of quality, harmony, strength. …) (Massé, 13 December 1931, p. [17])

For Philippe Smit, a great admirer of Stéphane Mallarmé - the artist payed tribute to him in other works - it was an obvious choice to treat one of the most well-known works of the poet¹ in a large painting. His appreciation for the music of Claude Debussy, whose Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun² is inspired by the eponymous poem, can only confirm this choice.
In the Greek and Latin world, the faun is a benevolent god, protector of herds and shepherds, playing a kind of flute, the Syrinx, and he will be soon be identified with Pan.
Mallarmé, who tried with this poetry "to put, beside the alexandrine with all its manners, a kind of ordinary playfulness tinkled around it, as one would say a musical accompaniment made by the poet himself"³, had especially appreciated Debussy’s work, which he described as follows: "the music evokes the emotion of my poem and describes the depth of the picture in the most vivid tones, which no colour would have been able to express."⁴
So it is hardly surprising that Philippe Smit, in turn, freely interpreted this subject by introducing into the painting, in addition the faun and the nymph evoked by Mallarmé in his verses of pure poetry, a winged centaur playing the lyre.
This hybrid, certainly inspired by Chiron and added solely by the imagination of the artist, evokes the combination of instinct and intelligence. His wings carry him to the summits.
Philippe Smit paints him holding in his hand the lyre of Apollo, god of music and poetry. The artist may have wanted to pay a subtle tribute to Mallarmé and Debussy, symbolically united in this winged centaur.
It is only with caution that this interpretation is brought forward, the symbolism being never categorical, but it seems to us that it can shed light on the understanding of this painting.

1. Stéphane Mallarmé, L’Après-midi d’un faune, Paris: A. Darenne, 1876.
2. Musical composition first performed in Paris in 1894.
3. "[…] de mettre, à côté de l'alexandrin dans toute sa tenue, une sorte de jeu courant pianoté autour, comme qui dirait d'un accompagnement musical fait par le poète lui-même […]" (Huret, Jules, Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire, Paris: Charpentier, 1891, p. 62).
4. "[…] La musique évoque l'émotion de mon poème et dépeint le fond du tableau dans les teintes plus vives qu'aucune couleur n'aurait pu rendre."