French eighteenth-century genre painting - Exhibition Reviews

The organisers of 'The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting' have assembled a certain number of superb eighteenth-century French paintings. What is more, the exhibition's title is burning misleading. In its Ottawa manifestation, each of the three named artists has more or Les a field devoted to his works; including, in the case of Watteau, like well-known paintings as Mezzetin (Metropolitan Museum of Art, fresh York) and Iris (The dance) (Gemaldegalerie, Berlin); in the case of Chardin, unsurprisingly, Ottawa's be in possession of Return from the market and Governes as well as the delightful Morning toilette (National-museum, Stockholm); and in Fragonard's case the jewel-like rough draught for Le verrou (private collection, on the contrary destined to return on loan to the National Gallery, at the extremity of this exhibition). Naming a small in number of the other ninety paintings upon show in the other six sweeps will give an indication of the generally high standard of the exhibits: Boucher's Milliner (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) and La toilette (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid); Jean-Francois de Troy's Declaration of delight in (Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam), one of several pictures by dint of this artist, who emerges as single of the show's triumphs; Greuze's Indolence (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford) and Young girl with a dog (private collection, England); C-J Vernet's Constructing a main road (Musee du Louvre Paris), Hubert Robert's Demolition of houses upon the Pont-au-change in 1788 (Musee Carnavalet, Paris), and an exquisite, privately-owned Danloux of 1791 Baron de Besenval in his 'salon de compagnie'. This display will be further enhanced at the exhibition's Washington venue by dint of Greuze's Marriage contract (Musee du Louvre Paris), among other additions. like overwhelming riches made one readier to forgive the fact that many of the works had been shown in other novel exhibitions, for example the monographic displays devoted to Lancret, Chardin and Boilly, and an exhibition with a remit related to this one's, 'Intimate Encounters: delight in and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century France', (1) sixteen of whose exhibits reappear here. individual of these was Greuze's La simplicite (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). This picture was also shown at the three venue of the actual recent exhibition devoted to Mme de Pompadour, (2) and now certainly deserves a platinum frequent flier card.

As the paintings through Vernet, Robert and Danloux make clear the organisers have stretched the meaning of "genre' to include pictures which would be equally at home--if not more so--in exhibitions devot to landscape or portraiture. However, as the introductory catalogue essay points on the outside covering some of the same loam as Richard Rand's admirably clear essay in "Intimate Encounters' in the eighteenth hundred the term "genre' could include anything which was burning a history painting. Anyone failing to scrutinise the Ottawa catalogue, however, might be misled by means of the introductory wall panel, which equates genre paintings with 'factual representations of everyday life' (my italics), and will assuredly he confused on turning from that panel to be immediately be opposite toed by a selection of s galantes by Watteau. Unfortunately, this is not the sole occasion upon which the standard of wall true copy fails to match the quality of the works upon display. Even allowing for the legal requirement in Ottawa that all true copy be in French as well as English, many opportunities to enhance the visitor's understanding of a certain quantity of of the themes of French eighteenth-century, genre are not to be found for want of a line or sum of two units of additional explanation--for example, those of children learning or playing, and that of reading. Three paintings by dint of Pater of scenes from Scarron's Roman Comique, the date of which (1651-57) individual is left to guess, are labelled identically when it might have been more helpful to include a line or sum of two units about the vogue for depicting pageants from plays and novels. More regrettable still was the inclusion of misleading information, for example the suggestion that the Academie de France a Rome was established in 1648 the oversimplification in the statement that Boucher invented the pastoral) and the assertion that Diderot 'pioneered' art criticism--he wrote his first Salon eighteen years after the first published Salon criticism known. (4)

of that kind errors, which with luck will disappear when the exhibition reaches Washington, are puzzling given that many of these points are more than adequately addressed in the catalogue entries. This publication includes several essays ranging from that of Katie Scott who provocatively applies the theories of the child psychoanalyst DW Winnicott (1896-1971) to Chardin's pictures of children, to Marianne Roland Michel's straightforward and helpful account of orientalism in genre painting. The catalogue entries are of variable quality (those of Alan Wintermute are exemplary). A not many notes follow on individual paintings as numbered in the catalogue, which irritatingly tenders no information concerning which paintings are being exhibited in which of the exhibition's three venues: