Saint Augustine in His Study

Saint Augustine in His Study, painted in 1845, is a product of Cabanel's years as a Prix de Rome pensionnaire in Italy, where he spent time studying early Christian art, Renaissance fresco, and the pictorial traditions surrounding the Church Fathers. Augustine of Hippo was among the most depicted of the Latin Fathers, and the image of the scholar-saint surrounded by books — translating, writing, or receiving divine illumination — had a long pictorial history extending from Flemish panels through Baroque ceiling frescoes. For a young academic painter, the subject demonstrated competence in religious history painting, the genre considered most demanding and prestigious by the French academy. The Milwaukee Art Museum acquired the work as part of its holdings in nineteenth-century academic painting, where it provides evidence of Cabanel's formation before his mature Salon career.

Oil on canvas in a mode indebted to seventeenth-century Flemish and Italian religious painting: warm candlelit or directional interior light, carefully placed books and scholarly attributes, and an emphasis on the saint's contemplative expression. The composition is relatively compact, focusing attention on the head and hands as the expressive core. Paint handling is somewhat tighter than in Cabanel's mature work, reflecting student discipline.