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THE METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART
Europe in the Age of
Enlightenment and Revolution

PUBLISHED BY

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

New York

PUBLISHER

Bradford D. Kelleher
EDITOR IN CHIEF

John P. O'Neill
EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Mark D. Greenberg
EDITORIAL STAFF

Lucy A. O'Brien
Sarah C. McPhee
Josephine Novak
Robert McD. Parker
Michael A. Woloh<~jian
DESI<;NER

Mary AnnJoulwan

Commentaries written by Museum curators: Costume Institute: .Jean L.

Druesedow, associate curator in charge (Plate 19); Department of Drawings: Helen Mules, assistant curator (Plates 12, 46, 47, 50, 52, H~. g;~.
104); Lawrence TurCic, research associate (Plates 4, 15, 22); Depanment
of European Paintings: Gary Tinterow, associate curator, Susan Alyson
Stein, research associate, Anne M.P. Norton, research intern (All Paintings); Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts: .James D.
Draper, curator (Plates I~. ~I. ~2. 45, 67, 69, H6, H7, 91, 122); .Johanna
Hecht, associate curator (Plates 10, 26-28, 34, 89); .Jessie McNab, associate curator (Plates 25, 5H, 78-HO); Clare Vincent, associate curator (Plates
21. 96, 97, 109, Ill); Danielle 0. Kisluk-Grosheide, curatorial assistant
(Plates H, 29, ~0. ~3. ~9. 57, 59, 60); Maureen A. Cassidy-Geiger, research
assistant (Plates 17, 20, 24, 44, 119); Textile Study Room: Alice Zrebiec,
associate curator (Plates 9, 40, 43, 61, 8H); Department of Prints and Pho~
tographs: Suzanne Boorsch, associate curator (Plates 6, 7, 16, 5~. 68, 74,
75, 77, 92, 108); Maria Morris Hambourg, associate curator (Plates 117, 121).
Photography commissioned from Schecter Lee, assisted by Lesley Heathcote: Plates 4, 8-10, 12, I~. IH, 20-22,26-28, ~I. ~4-~6, 40, 42, 43, 45,
4H,51,56,58,6~.66,69,7~73-76,7H,80,8~.86,88-9l,9~.94,96,9H,

100, 104, 107, 110, 114, ll9, 122. All other photographs by The Photograph Studio, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Maps and time chart designed by Wilhelmina Reyinga-Amrhein.
TITLE l'A<a:

THIS PA(;E

Woman with a Parrot, 1865-66

Stud_v o(Clas.lical DmjH'ry (Stratonice)

.Jean August Dominique Ingres
French, 1780-1867
Black chalk, estompe, part. squared
in black chalk, on beige paper;
I ~rY.'l x l2Yx in. (49.2 x ~2.1 em.)
Gustavus A. PfeifTer Fund, 196~
(63.66)

Gustave Coi.trbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 51 x 77 in.
(129.5 x 195.6 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer,
1929, H.O. Havemeyer Collection
(29.100.57)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Europe in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution.
Includes index.
I. Art, European-Catalogs. 2. Art, Modern-17th- I Hth centuries-Europe-Catalogs. ~-Art, Modern-19th century-Europe-Catalogs.
4. Art-New York (N.Y.)-Catalogs. 5. Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York, N.Y.)-Catalogs. I. Marandei,J. Patrice. II. Title.
N6756.M47 19H7 709'.4'07401471 87-5547
ISBN 0-87099-451-4
ISBN 0-87099-452-2 (pbk.)
Printed and bound by Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., Tokyo, .Japan. Composition by U.S. Lithograph, typographers, New York.
This series was conceived and originated jointly by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fukutake Publishing Co., Ltd. DNP (America) assisted in
coordinating this pn~ject.
Copyright 1987 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art

DIRECTOR'S

FOREWORD

his volume, devoted to the arts of Europe during the period roughly 1750 to 1850, is the seventh
publication in a series of twelve volumes that, collectively, represent the scope of the Metropolitan
Museum's holdings while selectively presenting the very finest objects from each of its curatorial
departments.
This ambitious publication program was conceived as a way of presenting the collections of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art to the widest possible audience. More detailed than a museum guide,
broader in scope than the Museum's scholarly publications, this series presents paintings, drawings,
prints, and photographs; sculpture, furniture, and the decorative arts; costumes, arms, and armorall integrated in such a way as to offer a unified and coherent view of the periods and cultures
represented by the Museum's collections. The objects that have been selected for inclusion in the series
constitute a small portion of the Metropolitan's holdings, but they admirably represent the range and
excellence of the various curatorial departments. The texts relate each of the objects to the cultural
milieu and period from which it derives and incorporates the fruits of recent scholarship. The
accompanying photographs, in many instances specially commissioned for this series, offer a splendid
and detailed tour of the Museum.
We are particularly grateful to the late Mr. Tetsuhiko Fukutake, who, while president of Fukutake
Publishing Company, Ltd., Japan, encouraged and supported this project. His dedication to the
publication of this series has contributed greatly to its success.
The collections of the Metropolitan Museum are particularly rich in European art of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and these collections have grown both through gifts of many
generous donors and judicious purchases made possible by the Museum's acquisition funds.
Among the many donors of paintings, we must mention especially Jules Bache, Jessie Woolworth
Donahue, Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, Robert Lehman, and Catharine Lorillard Wolfe. The collections of
European sculpture and decorative arts owe special gratitude to Samuel P. Avery, J. Pierpont Morgan,
Mrs. Herbert N. Straus, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman. Important prints and drawings of the
period have been donated to the Museum by Mrs. Robert W. Goelet and Robert Lehman.
Purchases in all these areas have been made possible through funds established by Gwynne M.
Andrews, Harris Brisbane Dick, Isaac D. Fletcher, Henry G. Marquand, Joseph Pulitzer, Alfred N.
Punnett, and JacobS. Rogers.
In preparing this volume, the editors drew on the expertise of curators in several departments. We
are especially grateful to Gary Tinterow, Susan Alyson Stein, and Anne M.P. Norton, in the
Department of European Paintings, and James D. Draper in the Department of European Sculpture
and Decorative Arts, for their invaluable assistance in organizing the book, selecting objects from
their departments, and in writing many of the commentaries that appear in the book. Maureen A.
Cassidy-Geiger,Johanna Hecht, Danielle 0. Kisluk-Grosheide,Jessie McNab, Clare Vincent, and
Alice Zrebiec, in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, wrote commentaries on
objects within their special fields of interest. Helen B:Mules and Lawrence Tureic, in the Department
of Drawings, and Suzanne Boorsch and Maria Morris Ham bourg, in the Department of Prints and
Photographs, were responsible for commentaries on works from their departments. We are also
grateful to Mr. J. Patrice Marandel, curator of European Paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts,
for preparing the introduction to this volume.

Philippe de Montebello
Director

INTRODUCTION

EUROPE IN THE AGE OF

ENLIGHTENMENT
AND

REVOLUTION

y 17 50 it had become customary for young English

noblemen to make the "Grand Tour," a lengthy journey in quest of classical beauty and exotic sensation that
took them across the Continent to Rome and Naples. Englishmen, although by far the largest contingent to make
this pilgrimage, were not the only ones to do so. The French
and the Germans flocked to Rome as did Scandinavians,
Slavs, and-toward the end of the century-even Americans. A visit to Rome was not a new phenomenon in Western culture. At least since the Renaissance its monuments
had represented an ideal toward which every artist strove.
For the French, whose culture was organized according
to stricter rules than that of any other European country, a
sojourn in Rome was virtually mandatory in the education
of their artists. Indeed, in 1666 a French Academy had been
established there in order to allow the promising young
talents who had won the Prix de Rome in Paris to complete their training. The taxing program of studies at the
Academy included above all drawing after the antique and
copying after those artists who, in more recent times, had
achieved a level of fame equal to that of the Greeks and
Romans.
By the late eighteenth century, however, foreign visitors
to Rome included not only artists but growing numbers of
wealthy and well-educated tourists. Their expectations, the
demands they made on both artists and the art market, and
the ideas they acquired and brought back home contributed to a fundamental change in the culture of Europe.
The changes in art, philosophy, music, and sensibility that
we describe as Neoclassicism are to a large extent late eighteenth-century phenomena that could only have taken root
and blossomed on Roman soil.
It was indeed in Rome that the fundamentals of the new
aesthetic creed were formulated and first put into practice
by a Small group of painters that included some key ones of
foreign origin. The theoretician of the new school was a
German, the Saxon Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who
worked in Rome as the librarian to Cardinal Albani, himself
one of the most important collectors of antiquities at the
time. Winckelmann's theories were based upon his studies
6

of antiquity, and his mission was to regenerate the artswhich in his view had fallen into decadence-by the imitation of the highest achievements of the ancients. This
simple but ambitious program was enormously successful:
Winkelmann's theoretical works spread throughout Europe,
and painters in his Roman entourage, inspired by his writings, in turn encouraged Winckelmann.
The "noble simplicity" and "calm grandeur," by which
Winckelmann meant chiefly a harmony of proportion in
the drawing of the figure and a well-balanced composition,
are immediately evident in the works of Anton Rafael Mengs,
whose international career and lengthy stays in Rome put
him in contact with the German theoretician whose circle
he joined. The most extreme example of the influence
Winckelmann exerted upon Mengs is the fresco of Parnassus
he executed in 1761 for the villa of Cardinal Albani. The
cold, hieratic figures of this composition, arranged in a frieze
(as if to deny the deep illusionism of Baroque ceiling painting) were much admired in its day. For many tourists in Rome
it was the best expression of the new style and as such
counted among the most visited modern monuments of the
city. The fresco presents the painter's style at its chilliest,
most forbidding, and most heroic. Yet Mengs was also capable of more intimate moments. His portrait ofWinckelmann
(Plate 5) in particular reveals his talent in this genre, and
it eschews the facile brilliance of Rococo portraiture. For
the defender of the "noble simplicity" of antique art, Mengs
chose a deliberately stark presentation reminiscent of the
austerity of some Republican Roman portraits, thereby introducing a note of troubling realism.
If a visit to the Villa Albani to admire Mengs's ceiling was
de rigeur for travelers in Rome, they usually preferred having their own portraits painted by Pompeo Batoni. It is said
that more than one hundred fifty Englishmen alone sat for
him. His art, varied and attractive, was indeed immediately
likable. Less radical than Mengs in his aesthetic choices, he
nevertheless conferred upon his models an air of informal
modernity by representing them in seminatural settings,
often featuring Roman sculptures or archaeological finds
the sitter had admired or even acquired. No less appreci-

ated by his patrons were Batoni's mythological-or even

religious-compositions (see Plate 3). For many, Batoni's
compositions embodied the very essence of the Italian
school: a sense of drawing inherited from Raphael, volumes
bespeaking a modest tribute to ancient sculpture, and arefined yet strong palette close to that of the Bolognese school.
More than simply expounding a new aesthetic, Batoni was
able to sense the taste of the day and thereby to satisfy the
needs of a large and fashionable clientele. The fact that his
paintings, charming as we may still find them, lacked the
seriousness characteristic of great art and that their modernity was due more to the use of fashionable props than
to a deep understanding of the art of the past, were already
sensed by one of Batoni's English contemporaries, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who shortly after Batoni's death predicted-in
his fourteenth discourse-the decline of his popularity.
The craze for Batoni's portraits resulted largely from his
mastery of the discreet antique reference. Joyful and elegant rather than forbidding and austere, they became the
perfect mirror of a society mad for the antique in all of its
guises. The fortuitous discovery in 1711 of the buried city of
Herculaneum, soon followed by that of Pompeii, gave the
European intelligentsia access not only to works considered
to be superior to modern works, but also to a whole civilization known until then only through its descriptions in literature. These once-buried cities, though jealously guarded
by the king of Naples and only grudgingly shown to visitors,
were the subject of quasiscientific publications. Le antichita
diErcolano esposte was published between 1752 and 1792, while
Winckelmann in his Sendschreiben von den herculanischen
Entdeckungen (1762) criticized the rudimentary excavation
techniques still practiced in Naples.
Collectors, such as Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy
to Naples, vied with the king in commissioning publications
of their own large collections of antique vases. His Antiquites
etrusques, grecques et romaines, published in 1766-67, ranks
among the most lavish books produced in the eighteenth
century. These folios, along with many others, provided a
wealth of images that enjoyed an astonishing popularity at
the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth
century. Perhaps even more importantly, they also helped
to establish modern archaeological discourse. Indeed, there
was not a single aspect of the visual arts that did not respond to the elements of this new grammar.

he eighteenth century was a particularly rich period

for building in Rome. Such familiar parts of the Roman
scene as the Fontana di Trevi or the steps on the Piazza di
Spagna were great novelties at the time. To marvel at these,
as many did, was also to recognize that the gap between the
present and the past had finally been bridged. Painters celebrated these new monuments almost as fervently as they did
the architecture of the past. Landscape, or view, paintings
counted among the most attractive and collected souvenirs
of the foreign traveler. The Venetians were then masters at
publicizing the image of their city. Many of their painters,
above all Canaletto, had built their reputation on exacting,
stagelike renditions of familiar views of San Marco or the
Rialto bridge.

Rome had had a tradition of view painters, of course, but

the focus of their attention changed in the eighteenth century. In order to suggest the quality of the new sensibility, it
may be revealing to contrast to the classically sedate earlier
vedute of Rome and the Venetian panoramas of Canaletto to
the new kind of view paintings encountered in Rome and
Naples in the eighteenth century. The best exponent of
this genre was Giovanni Paolo Pannini. He painted both
modern and antique subjects, occasionally pairing his compositions (see Plates 1, 2) to emphasize the continuity of
ancient and modern taste. In his more traditional views,
Pannini eschews the optical effects of Canaletto but delights
in the precise depiction of monuments whether antique
or modern. In contrast to Canaletto, Pannini's theatrical
effects gave his audience access to a more direct, candid
slice of life. In his rich vedute of antique su~jects, Pannini
gives free rein to his imagination, heaping diverse monuments one upon another, using a sort of collage of the imagination to create views rich in effect and powerful in their
suggestiveness. His landscapes are unmistakably Roman, not
only in the choice of subjects but also in their sense of grandeur and nobility. They were, and remain today, the best
propaganda art for the city they glorify.
Very different, and yet equally important for the development of the new sensibility, are the view paintings done
nearby in Naples. Although the wealth of antique monuments in that city was in no way inferior to that of Rome-in
fact it was, in many respects, superior to it-the view painters of Naples, often expatriates, did not respond to their
environment in quite the same manner. The extraordinary
setting of the city on its expansive bay, the special quality of
the light and the life combined with the menacing-yet ever
so fascinating-presence of the erupting Mt. Vesuvius led
artists to shun the city and its monuments and to devote
their attention instead to nature, thereby introducing into
the culture of the late eighteenth century the first thrills of
the Romantic sensibility.
Yet the taste for antiquity might have remained but a fad
had it not been so vigorously taken up, transformed, and
revivified by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an artist whose medium, etching, and canny business acumen spread the imagery of antiquity across Europe. He worked in many areas
-architecture, design, and, especially, engraving-and his
genius cannot easily be classified. His intensely poetic vision
was rooted in the fantasy world of his Venetian predecessors and completely lacked the dogmatism of Winckelmann's
cold rhetoric. His enthusiasm for Rome was the zeal of the
converted, having himself been born in Venice. Less at ease
with the pen than with the etcher's needle, Piranesi tried to
refute the German aesthetician's theories of the supremacy
of the Greeks over the Romans, but his essay on the subject
failed to rally the enthusiasm of the scholarly intelligentsia
for whom this topic was very much of the moment.
Whereas the previous Roman vedutisti had created convincing images of the city-or fanciful imaginary views of
it in which the antique ruins always played a picturesque
part-Piranesi added a decidedly theatrical dimension to
his compositions: Through the deftest manipulation of
shades of black, the bold balancing of voids and volumes,

and the creation of originally sited perspectives, his etchings attain a heroic level that sets them above the perfunctory repertoire of places pictured by other artists. It was often
with these compelling images in mind that some of the most
enlightened travelers to Rome approached the city, only to
be sadly let down. Goethe, in his Italian journey, blames
Piranesi for his slight disappointment upon seeing the Baths
of Caracalla: Somehow the actual ruins did not live up to
their image! For it was indeed Piranesi's genius to have been
able to invent a picture of Rome, which, if not true to its
reality, was nevertheless true to its legend.
Piranesi was also an expert in the restoration of antiquities, and thus he naturally dealt with foreign visitors, usually British, who were eager during their Grand Tour to
acquire remnants of Roman civilization for their own homes.
Piranesi's approach to restoration would be considered
highly unorthodox today since he mainly "completed" antique fragments according to an approximate idea of their
original appearance. For Piranesi this was yet another means
of demonstrating his virtuosity: Just as his renditions of
Roman sites acquired a new dimension, his proposals for
and completed restorations of antiquities turned these objects into fantastic creations. These elaborations rapidly became part of the repertory of images and objects used by the
many artists who helped diffuse his style. Among those were
members of Piranesi's broad circle of foreign artists such as
the Englishman Robert Adam or the Frenchman Charles
Louis Clerisseau. Piranesi's influence, notably on architecture and the applied arts in England, was particularly felt in
the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Many country
houses were redesigned at that time in accordance with
neo-Palladian precepts so that the important collections of
antiquities so recently brought home might have an appropriate "classical" setting. In such houses chimneypieces might
ideally derive from Piranesi's very designs, while the general
look of the building would betray the archaeological concerns set forth in his prints.
Piranesi received numerous commissions from the English, and his prints were widely distributed there, but his
influence pervaded Europe. Ever the wily entrepreneur,
Piranesi established the Roman shop where his prints were
offered for sale across the street from the French Academy
where it could hardly be missed by the student artists.
Hubert Robert has a special place among those students at
the Academy. Even though his work cannot be understood
without constant reference to Piranesi, with whom he was
friends during his lengthy stay in Rome, or without the example of Pannini, with whom he worked, what sets him apart
from these artists is equally important. His views of cities,
notably Paris and Versailles, strike a very different note
from the somewhat mechanical views of Pannini: There is
something natural and spontaneous in them that bespeaks
a direct observation of nature. Often in a corner of his
compositions Hubert Robert represented a!l artist sketching,
thus indicating that nature was the best teacher. His own
sketchlike technique exemplifies his nondogmatic approach.
Even in his more elaborately fantastic vedute of ruins, nature is never absent. Although Piranesi's archaeological taste
looms over Robert's work, the painter's delicate images never
8

reach for the heroic dimensions of those of the engraver.

Unlike Piranesi, so concerned with the archetectonic manipulation of masses and volumes, Robert was intrigued by
the more subtle art of garden design in which only a limited
control might be exerted. And his architectural renderings
were generally of fantasy buildings, the Hameau of Marie
Antoinette at Versailles, for instance, or the queen's dairy at
Rambuillet.
Hubert Robert first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1767.
That same year the Petit Trianon of Versailles was nearing
completion. Both the location of the building and its decor
proclaimed a new art of living at the French court. This
small building provided relief from the formality and pomp
of the chateau itself. Its decoration avoided the traditional
dynastic glorification that had been the chief program at
Versailles. In fact, the Petit Trianon was virtually a bare
building-stark but pleasant outside, pleasing and restful
to the eye indoors. Again Piranesi-and some of his English interpreters, such as William Chambers, whose Treatise
on Civil Architecture of 1759 was well known in France-can
be credited for this shift in taste. A discreet return to the
antique began then, and it was followed by most architects,
furniture designers, and decorators.

f architecture and decoration led the way toward a pareddown aesthetic, the same cannot be said of painting and
sculpture. Before the creation of the stark and emblematic
pictures, so rich in moralistic overtones, that characterize
the short reign of Louis XVI and the last, revolutionary
years of the century, many artists indulged in an exuberant
style that has too often been seen as the last agonized shriek
of the Rococo. Painting in France between 1760 and 177 5 is
particularly complex, combining many elements and strongly individualistic personalities. Robert, as we have seen, was
one of those artists for whom the glorification of the past
could not take place without an accompanying study of
nature. The world of passion, pleasure, and delight expressed
in the work of]. H. Fragonard (see Plates 14-16, 18), Robert's
friend and traveling companion in Italy, is equally difficult
to define. To be sure, he brought to its apex the galant world
of his one-time teacher Fran<;ois Boucher, and certainly the
influence of northern masters such as Rubens and Rembrandt partly explains his obvious delight in the materiality
of paint. But most importantly, Fragonard must be understood in the context of Italy, although the lesson he learned
there was not the customary one of his time: He was not
responsive to the grandeur of antiquity, and his obligatory
attempts at history painting (for the Prix de Rome and for
his reception into the Academy) are competently theatrical
and lack the conviction one finds in the work of born academicians. Fragonard mastered the technique of the Italian
painters by making numerous copies, but he disregarded
their often stilted officialism. What he did learn in Italy was
drawn from the life and the landscape around him, and he
never adopted the orthodox rhetoric of his more conventional peers. Instead, he created a world closer to nature and
to the bucolic works of Virgil and the erotic poems of Ovid.
In a century prone to extol the individual, Fragonard was
first and foremost an individualistic painter. When an official

career was still considered highly desirable and could be

achieved by submitting oneself to strict rules, Fragonard did
not bother to comply. He exhibited only once at the Salon,
in 1767; he never became a full-fledged Academician. His
paintings are often small, like Watteau's (which he must have
admired), intimate like the stilllifes of Chardin (under whom
he was briefly apprenticed), and are intended more for
private contemplation than for public display. Their discreet humor and unabashed frankness are equaled only in
eighteenth-century literature-in the personal tone, for
instance, of the letters that compose Ladas's Liaisons dangereuses. This may seem far from Italy, but the gently subversive art of Fragonard can be rooted only in the informality
absorbed in that country by a sensitive and responsive artist.
Fragonard's early studies, particularly those executed under
the patronage of the Abbe de Saint-Non at Tivoli in 1760,
show an immediacy of response to nature that would not be
seen again in French painting until late in the nineteenth
century. Fragonard applied this directness and sincerity to
all his creations, from copies of Italian masterpieces to spirited portraits, atmospheric landscapes, and genre scenes.
It is only superficially paradoxical that in 1766-when the
European sensibility was shifting toward a dignified vision
of antiquity-Catherine II of Russia, one of the most enlightened monarchs of the time and one deeply influenced
in her aesthetic choices by the stern recommendations of
Diderot and Frederic Melchior Grimm, tried to attract to
her court one of the least apparently Neoclassical sculptors
of the time, Claude Michel Clodion. At the time he was
established in Rome and enjoying success. Clodion's works
lacked the diversity of Fragonard, his contemporary to whom
he is often compared. But like Fragonard, his vision of
antiquity-the source for all art of the period-derived from
a pagan dream, and he expressed it in tantalizing terra-cotta
sculptures of lustful satyrs and willing nymphs. The medium
of these works was itself rife with archaeological overtones,
and they were an immediate and resounding success. Like
Fragonard, Clodion celebrates the Dionysiac aspect of life
and love, and he does so with an equal humor and lack of
pretention. And as with Fragonard, Clodion's reference to
the antique is less to its legacy of images (although representations on so-called Etruscan vases may have been a direct source for the sculptor) than to its spirit and its youthful
exuberance, real or imagined. A sense of that primal energy is, in fact, a trademark of Clodion who, alone among
the sculptors of his century, knew how to kindle that incandescence even in his rare portraits.
When Clodion treated a subject th.at is both allegorical
and historical-such as the invention of the hot-air balloon
by the Montgolfier brothers (Plate 32)-he did so without
the seriousness expected of official commissions: Cherubs
cling to the ascending balloon as if attempting to ground it
with their feathery presence. In brief, the qualities that set
his work apart from the production of his contemporaries
are humor, movement, a swiftness of execution that does
not preclude the most exacting rendition of detail, and above
all, a spirited vision of an imaginary ancient world.
No sculptor could be more different from Clodion than
Jean Antoine Houdon. Diderot, whose portrait Houdon

exhibited at the Salon of 1771 (Plate 26), wrote about it succinctly and aptly: "Tres resemblant." Houdon's studies after
life, such as his famous ecorche (the figure of a man whose
removed skin reveals all of his carefully detailed muscles),
constitute the basis of his work. Life and death masks helped
him to render the likenesses of his sitters with a stark realism
reminiscent both of Jean Goujon's startling gisants at SaintDenis and of Republican Roman portraiture. He was perhaps
less interested in the psychological traits of his sitters than
he was almost morbidly fascinated by their bare physicality:
Bone structure, sagging flesh, hair, pitted skin are all mercilessly rendered. Houdon astonishes us today as much as he
did his contemporaries-his style seems so at odds with our
received image of the eighteenth century.
Louis Claude Vasse (see Plate 13) or Pierre Julien (see
Plate 31) fit more properly into their own century, perhaps
because they lack the originality of a Clodion or the merciless
eye of a Houdon. Theirs are decorative works, simple and
pure, intended to enhance the elegant architecture and
delicate interiors popular at the end of the century. Julien's
work in particular is so much a mirror of its time, with its
combination of measured classicism and post-Baroque elegance that, were it not for its gracefulness and quality of
execution, it might be considered parodic, or at best a mere
object of fashion.
Thus with varying degrees of success French sculptors of
the transitional period between the reigns of Louis XV and
Louis XVI created works that, based upon their Roman experiences, expressed their own particular interpretations of
antiquity rather than slavishly following given models. It was
Antonio Canova who created a body of work that in the
eyes of his contemporaries actually equaled the greatness of
antiquity and yet, by taking into account the lessons of the
greatest Baroque sculptors-Bernini in particular-was resolutely modern. Like Piranesi, Canova was from the Veneto
but achieved his fame in Rome where he enjoyed papal patronage. An overnight celebrity and arguably the most famous artist in Europe by the turn of the century, Canova
went far beyond the hopes of the rigorous Winckelmann:
Not only are his sculptures "correct" by the standards of the
German historian, but their virtuoso brilliance of conception and execution puts them on a par with the most inspired sculptures of the past. Canova at once applied the
rules and transcended them: This originality is often hard to
see in the face of the work of his followers who, awed by the
masterly technique of their model, forgot-or were simply
unable to achieve-the variety and freedom of invention of
the great sculptor. All embued with the "calm grandeur"
so dear to Winckelmann, Canova's compositions nevertheless
offer a multiplicity of original solutions to traditional sculptural problems: His Perseus (Plate 10) is an image of heroic
triumph: Its spirit is classical but its execution is unmistakably
Canova's invention.

anova's revolutionary approach to sculpture can be

compared only to David's equally radical transformation of painting. It should be noted, however, that even before David's complete reformulation of painting, significant
changes had affected the visual arts of the late eighteenth
9

century in France. Duly commented upon by such constant

scrutinizers as Diderot, the biennial Salons held at the Louvre gave artists their only real opportunity to present their
latest creations to a large, interested public. In the late 1760s
and 1770s these Salons had been the scene of spectacular
and often somewhat awkward juxtapositions. The late compositions of the aging and almost blind Boucher, for instance,
were ridiculed by the likes of Diderot, who equated the loose
brushstrokes and unceasing use of light mythological subject matter with a decadence of style and moral values.
To this style the "modern" critics opposed the independent
work of Jean Baptiste Greuze. A painter of portraits and of
genre scenes, he introduced a concern for sentiment close
to the fashionable ideas expressed at the time in the literary
works of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Greuze's trip to Italy in
17 55 has until recently been judged irrelevant to the development of his career, yet his work reveals a deeply original
interpretation of antique themes arid motifs. His narrative
paintings are, in fact, allegories in disguise. His elegantly
clad peasants often affect the postures of Hellenistic sculptures or, as in the Broken Eggs (Plate 11 ), are shown playing
with the attributes usually reserved for mythological figures.
The little boy on the right, for instance, is attempting to repair
a broken bow and arrow, the traditional emblem of Cupid. It
is not incidental that this painting was executed in Rome at
a time when the artist was traveling with his patron, the
enlightened Abbe Gougenot. Greuze's resounding success
with such narrative paintings led him to try his hand at history painting, and in 1769 he presented to the Academy as
his reception piece Septimus Severus and Caracalla, his only
foray into history paining. He was not admitted to the Academy among the history painters, but rather among the genre
painters, and severing his ties with the art establishment and
no longer showing at the Salon, he followed an independent
career and returned to the kind of dignified genre scenes that
had established his reputation. His style, which had contributed so much to the formulation of ideas crucial to modern
painting, did not survive Diderot's attacks, and Greuze's later
years were marked by an unjust oblivion.
The link between the decisive shift in French painting of
the 1760s and 1770s and the enlightened ideas of the philosophes, eventually culminating in the French Revolution of
1789, has often been noted. Indeed, the subject matter of
most paintings of that prerevolutionary period glorifies
moral virtues and offers the exemplary conduct of the ancients as a model for contemporary life. Their austere style,
shunning the vaporous world of the Rococo, bespeaks the
seriousness of the painters' ambition. Even in the decoration of private homes, the lingering amorous subjects of the
late Rococo suddenly appear out of place. Typical of this
change in taste was the decision, in 1773, by Madame du
Barry-the king's former mistress-to refuse Fragonard's
splendid Progress of Love (New York, Frick Collection) decorations for her residence at Louveciennes in favor of the
more serious scheme devised by the little-known Vien, one
of the exponents of the severe style of the 1770s.
The search for and adoption of a new style did not imply
agreement with the new ideas on the part of artists. Most
of the virtuous and patriotic subjects that constitute the basis
10

of their works were imposed by their traditional patron, the

king (or rather by his superintendent of buildings, the official
who was in charge of distributing commissions). Many decisively "modern" artists were in fact staunch supporters of
the monarchy. Paradoxically perhaps, Fragonard's wife was
among the artists' spouses who, in an ostentatious demonstration of patriotism, offered their jewels to the National
Assembly less than two months after the Bastille had been
captured by the people of Paris.
Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun, however, always sided with the
crown, a choice that eventually drove her into exile. Yet her
portraits-an impressive tableau of French, and later, European aristocracy-are anything but backward-looking. She
was particularly close to the court and to Queen Marie Antoinette in particular, yet her portraits of the royal family
avoid the kind of official formality that had characterized
royal portraiture until then. Portraits of the queen and her
children show the royal consort as a dignified mother proud
of her children. Given the unpopularity of the queen, these
portraits are political propaganda at its best: They stress the
human qualities of the sitter behind the mask imposed upon
her by her rank. In these as in her less official portraits,
Vigee Le Brun adopts an engaging naturalism. If there is
no intense psychological depth in her depictions, there is
still something that goes beyond the merely fashionable: Her
palette and her application of paint occasionally reveal an
unexpectedly advanced artist. As such, her work provides a
significant link between the formalism of eighteenth-century
portraiture and the more direct approach to it characteristic
of the nineteenth century.
It is perhaps more than a coincidence that the period that
so prized such "masculine" virtues as honor and patriotism
also saw a proliferation of women painters. Among the most
gifted was Adelaide Labille-Guiard, often seen as the rival of
Vi gee LeBrun. Although they exhibited together at the same
Salon, Labille-Guiard rallied to the new regime during the
Revolution. In an egalitarian gesture, Jacques Louis David
was one of the first painters to accept women as pupils,
among them the wife of the scientist and fermier-general
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

y the time he exhibited the portrait of Lavoisier and

his wife (Plate 38), David had become one of the most
controversial figures in Western art. His early works, still
influenced by Boucher (a relative under whom he had briefly
studied), had rapidly given way to a series of landmark
paintings that radically transformed_ the course of art. David's
entry in the 1785 Salon, The Oath of the Horatii (Paris, Louvre),
painted in 1784, is radical in its paring down of emotional
elements. Anecdotal detail is totally eliminated; each component-figure, movement, expression, even the austere
architecture-acquires a symbolic significance. Commissioned by d'Angiviller for the crown, the painting was not
intended as a statement of revolutionary faith but more
broadly as an example of high virtue. It depicted total dedication to an elevated cause: the triumph of reason over
passion. As the French Revolution progressed, the radical
style of the painting (which had startled those admitted to
its preview in David's studio in 1784) became a metaphor

for the implacability of the new regime. David's own support

of the revolutionary cause reinforced the prophetic quality
of the painting.
His Death of Socrates (Plate 37) was conceived in the same
spirit of archaeological concern and moral rectitude. Completed in 1787 and shown at the Salon the same year, the
painting had been commissioned by Charles Michel Trudaine de la Sabliere, then only twenty years old. It was hardly
intended as a revolutionary statement, yet the very story of
the Greek philosopher condemned to death by the injustice
of the state was typical of the subjects David was ready to
depict with cool, even brutal, sincerity. It was painted at a
time when the established order was being severely criticized,
and it is hard to avoid seeing in this stark picture a subject
imbued with burning topicality. Indeed, the painting acquired considerable notoriety during the Revolution: It was
exhibited a second time at the Salon of 1791, and in 1795 it
was engraved with a decisively political intention. Ironically,
it was then intended as a protest against the brutality of
Robespierre's Terror, a movement that David had wholeheartedly supported.
David's scrupulous archaeological concern, which led him,
for instance, to request the help of prominent historians
while painting the Death of Socrates, can be viewed as a way of
giving his compositions a veracity otherwise unknown among
the works of his contemporaries. This can also be seen in
his portraits, the best of which are neither emblematic nor
realistic in the traditional sense of the term. Their evolution
in his oeuvre follows roughly that of his other paintings.
The double Lavoisier portrait is a study in relative asceticism.
The elegantly bare room that the couple occupies and the
proliferation of scientific instruments on the table and floor,
far from distracting or cluttering the composition, in fact give
it its meaning and underlie its seriousness of tone.
Among the many artists who admired the Death of Socrates
was the aging Sir Joshua Reynolds. At the time of the exhibition of David's picture, Reynolds was the most established
artist in England. One of the cofounders and the first president of the Royal Academy, in 1768, Reynolds was also a
persuasive theoretician. His Discourses, translated into many
languages and read throughout Europe-most notably in
France-constitute one of the pillars of Neoclassical theory.
David's Death of Socrates is worlds apart from Reynolds's contemporary portraits, yet both artists shared a belief in the
exacting demands of art. For Reynolds, beauty was an ideal
the artist could not fully achieve but toward which he had to
strive. This Neoplatonic idea reveals the august sources of
Reynolds's theories, nurtured as they were in the classical
tradition. In Rome in the early 1750s he witnessed the immense success of Mengs and Batoni but, as already noted,
disdained their works. Rightly or wrongly, he thought that
the slick manner of these modern masters-too often compared with Raphael himself-was simply a superficial parody
of the U mbrian master. His own art, more robust and ambitious, does not draw from the antique as directly as does
French Neoclassical painting. Reynolds's relationship to the
classical tradition was intellectual. His ambition was to create an art that would, quite simply, be as beautiful as that of
the ancients. This could only be achieved by a thorough

assimilation of the history and means of the painters of the

past. Raphael-but also Tintoretto, Titian, and Rubens
-were his sources. His technique, a combination of the recipes of the Old Masters and inventive new formulas, was
intended to give his compositions an Old Master quality.
Unfortunately for Reynolds, the English did not have a
tradition of history painting as had the Italians and the
French. This was the genre in which Reynolds should naturally have chosen to express his elevated ideas. Being limited
by his British patrons to portraiture, Reynolds contrived to
elevate the genre to truly heroic stature. For the gallery at
Northumberland House, decorated with copies after Raphael and the Bolognese (some of which had been executed
by Mengs and Batoni), Reynolds furnished full-size portraits
of the duke and duchess, thus setting his own original compositions beside those of the famous masters of the past.
Rather than show his sitters in the fashionable clothing of
the day, he preferred to depict them garbed in vaguely classical outfits and engaged in activities recalling ancient allegory.
These portraits combine a traditional sense of timelessness
with a modern interest in psychological expressiveness.
Reynolds and his rival in portraiture, Thomas Gainsborough, occasionally shared the same sitters, but the lofty
portraits of Reynolds could not be more foreign to the elegant informality of those by Gainsborough. Although the
latter's career coincided largely with Reynolds's and therefore with the triumph of Neoclassical aesthetics, his portraits and landscapes belong fully to the Rococo. Unlike the
French painters of that era to whom his works bear affinities, Gainsborough does not create a world of mythological
fantasy. Born a rural gentleman, Gainsborough remained
throughout his career a painter oflesser ambition than Reynolds and was hardly a theoretician. Eccentric and unorthodox, his working methods and his entire approach to the
goals of portraiture could not have been more different from
Reynolds's didacticism. One was a learned painter, the other
a peintre-ne, whose portraits, despite their spirited execution, retain an earthbound quality. Nature, rather than art,
was the guiding principle for Gainsborough. His sitters are
believable and have an immediate presence that betrays the
sympathy they so often clearly aroused in the artist. Landscapes were accorded the same sense of immediacy and enthusiasm, although he painted fewer of them than portraits,
which being much in demand, consumed more and more of
his time. If a portrait includes a landscape component, it is
always more than a mere backdrop. For all his naturalism,
though, Gainsborough was also a painter who drew upon
the works ofothers. His studies under the French engraver
Gravelot may have attuned him to Watteau's Fetes Champetres,
although he rejects the artifice of the genre to concentrate
on scenes of a more immediate reality. Rubens, both because
of his light sketch technique and of his astonishing landscapes,
seems also to be a constant reference in Gainsborough's
work-but again, brought down to a more accessible level.
Less inspired than either Reynolds or Gainsborough,
George Romney carried the tradition of portraiture into the
nineteenth-century. Like Reynolds, his ambition was to give
portrait painting in England the dignity of classical art. He
admired Le Sueur on a visit to Paris, discovered Raphael in
11

Rome and Titian in Venice, and drew also from the antique. Yet his portraits are more notable for their immediacy, ingenuity of composition, and lack of pretention than
for their overt or covert references to the antique. His extraordinarily large output can be explained by his ambition,
his affordable prices, and an easily accessible style that made
him the most fashionable painter of his day.
The debut of Thomas Lawrence as a child prodigy led
many to see in him the new hope of British painting. His
subsequent fame among his contemporaries was, in fact, at
least equal to that of Reynolds in his own time. Yet the brief
interval of time between Reynolds's production and the mature work of Lawrence shows a considerable shift in English
taste during the last years of the eighteenth century. Lawrence's patrons did not expect from him the classical references Reynolds believed to be important, nor was the painter
interested in masquerading his subjects in semiantique costumes. In 1818 Lawrence stunned Roman critics with portraits whose rich tonalities were compared to those of Titian.
He was very much a man of his time, reflecting and indeed
effecting a new sensibility, and his portraits reveal a range
of emotion unknown to his predecessors.

uropean art between 1760 and 1800 is especially difficult to define because of the astonishing and virtually
simultaneous occurrence of seemingly unrelated, if not contradictory, styles often even within the work of a single artist.
Romney's portraits make the more unexpected his original
compositions based on classical or Shakespearean subjects.
In Rome, the awesome austerity of David's Oath of the Horatii
had stunned artists, resident and itinerant, who were at that
time working in a very different and highly emotional style
that stressed the darker side of human psychology. David's
belligerent manner threatened to eclipse their work, especially since it, along with modified versions of the Empire
style, was spreading across Europe in the wake of Napoleon's armies. But the threat was shortlived; their work
flourished as the Romantic movement took hold. Indeed, it
seems paradoxical that Rome, whose past had provided Europe with a basis for a Neoclassical grammar, would also .
become the cradle of the Romantic movement.
The artists responsible for articulating this original formal vocabulary, as well as for demonstrating a special taste
for erudite subject matter, were centered around the Swissborn artist Henry Fuseli, who had rapidly emerged as a
major figure in the art world of London where he was virtually permanently settled. Literature-especially Homer,
Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Nordic sagas-provided the soutces for Fuseli's often recherche subjects. It
was, however, his contact with antiquity and Italian art (Michelangelo and Baccio Bandinelli, for instance) that helped
him formulate a highly idiosyncratic idiom in which the distorted gestures and dramatically exaggerated expressions
of the figures are rendered in a highly graphic style and in
which the illusion of depth is, as in Greek vase painting,
almost entirely absent. The fantastic and irrational world of
Fuseli's painting, often charged with sexual overtones, became a trademark of English and northern European painters in the last years of the eighteenth century. If nothing

12

else, these paintings offered a refreshing stock of new images.

Often associated with Fuseli's entourage, the young William Blake was an artist of very different ambition. A true
visionary, Blake may have borrowed some of his stylistic characteristics from Fuseli, whom he befriended. The expressiveness of Blake's drawings is, like Fuseli's, contained within
the limits of a strict, yet original, graphism. But Blake, unlike Fuseli, does not illustrate scenes from literature calculated to fire the imagination. Instead, his illustrations are
totally individualistic comments, part of an ambitious cosmological and personal philosophy that was also expressed in
his own literary works. At their most original, Blake's compositions-usually small watercolors-are self-contained expressions of a mystical vision, and they bear little relationship
to contemporary aesthetic or philosophical concerns. The
seriousness and conviction of the artist set him well apart
from all his contemporaries, who could only really appreciate
his work as an engraver. Yet the haunting presence of Blake's
work looms over European art as a sign of things to come.
In this respect, he can be compared to his contemporary,
Francisco Goya.
Goya's realm, however, was not intellectual or mystical
speculation. On the contrary, it was one of flesh and blood,
of radiant sunshine and opaque darkness, of extraordinary
humanity and compassion, of pessimism and despair. Like
David, his exact contemporary, he lived through the political upheavals of his time, yet the lesson he drew from them
was not one of stoicism. Witnessing the brutalities perpetrated by the Napoleonic armies during their occupation of
Spain and the senseless cycle of violence that followed, he
cried out against the absurdity of human nature. Yet Goya
never forgot the candid joyfulness of the scenes he had depicted in the 1770s as cartoons for tapestries, and he knew
that these images, too, were real.
Beginning as a painter of genre scenes that have a veracity unlike those of his French counterparts, Goya must have
rapidly realized that direct observation and the unadorned
recording of his subject could easily replace elaborate theories. His art, which often provokes a chill much like that of
David's, nevertheless achieves this effect through very different means. His portraits of the Spanish royal family or
members of the aristocracy are as much icons of their time
as they are indictments of a regime. Contrary to what is
often said, Goya's eye is not cruel or even critical, although
his ability to record and to express the personalities of his
sitters through such details as minute physical imperfections
or particularly telling accessories eventually succeeds in penetrating the deepest layers of the sitters' personalities. The
wide range of Goya's portraits, and the variety of their style
-from the dashing portraits of swaggering gentlemen and
got-up ladies to the more introspective studies painted with
obsessive candor-are guided above all by a profound honesty of vision. If in David's portraits humans are painted as
heroes, in Goya's, traditional heroic figures such as kings
and queens are given a chance to appear as normal, sometimes even pathetic, humans. Goya removed the masks of
composed elegance that characterized eighteenth-century
portraiture and offered us instead a gallery of raw personalities. By giving his sitters the same presence and accessi-

bility once reserved for self-portraits, Goya sounded the

death knell of the formal portrait. It is perhaps first in the
literature of the nineteenth century that one would have to
look to find such a radical approach to the depiction of
human nature. Goya's portraits announce the age of the
antihero as exemplified by Balzac's display of human types
or Flaubert's unflinching depictions of his characters.
It is hard to understand in retrospect how such blatant
exposure of human nature could have been acceptable to
the sitters who commissioned these portraits. Yet Goya was
in fact the most famous, and most fashionable, portrait
painter in late eighteenth-century Spain and the official artist of the court. Although portraits continued to occupy him
until the end of his life, which was spent in self-imposed
exile in Bordeaux, an important shift can be sensed in his
works in the period after the political events that ravaged
Spain at the turn of the eighteenth century. Goya's work
became then more publicly available through his readoption of the medium of etching (used earlier in his 1798 series Los Caprichos). The Disasters of War (executed in 1810,
but released only in 1863, long after the artist's death and
the events it depicted), the Bullfights (1816), and the Follies
series broadened the artist's visibility as well as his repertoire of
images. On the other hand, he followed his large representation of the execution of Spanish patriots, The 3rd of May
1808, (Madrid, Prado), a cry of horror at the reality of war,
with several paintings depicting a world of private fantasy.
To a certain extent these develop the themes and subjects
of Los Caprichos as well as of many small paintings Goya had
executed since the late 1780s. Particularly revealing of this
late manner are the so-called "black paintings" made for his
own house outside Madrid. Not intended for public exhibition, these paintings, executed in a rough technique and
somber harmonies, are the artist's ultimate statement. Their
meaning defies precise analysis, and they are often described
as antecedents of the Symbolism and Surrealism of a much
later era. As he had invited us to witness in his portraits the
reality of the human condition, so Goya invites us to consider
the reality of an apocalyptic world in his fantastic works.

uch had happened in France since David's Oath of

the H oratii had marked the dawn of a new era in

painting. The French Revolution had been a period of

upheaval for the arts. Some artists, like Vigee Le Brun, compromised by their former ties with the monarchy, or following their own convictions, had emigrated along with a part
of the aristocracy; others, Fragonard, for example, had survived the events without difficulties; and some, like Hubert
Robert, had on occasion been imprisoned and under threat
of death. David alone rode the crest of the Revolution not
only as the most prominent painter of his time but as the
recognized genius best able to dramatize and immortalize
its events. He also served as its unofficial designer-in-residence and de facto "minister of the arts." Seen by many
young politicians as a reenactment of ancient history, the
Revolution needed an artist to give it its image, and David
filled the bill to perfection.
Under the reign of Louis XVI the decor of daily life had
already witnessed a return to simple, elegant forms thought

to derive from antique prototypes. The process was accentuated during the Revolution: The seats for members of
the Comite de Salut Publique, for example, were direct adaptations of antique models designed by David. As the Revolution progressed and a new world of elegance replaced
the roughness of the high revolutionary period, customs
and costumes continued to reflect the taste for antiquity.
Napoleon, the heir-or usurper-of the French Revolution,
quite naturally continued the tradition, as he saw himself
the reincarnation of both Alexander the Great and Julius
Caesar. Without apparent hesitation or conflict, David had
transformed his earlier revolutionary fervor into unconditional adulation of the new monarch and himself established
the link between Napoleon and his ancient predecessors by
inscribing his Bonaparte at the St. Bernard Pass (1800, Versailles) with the names of Hannibal and of Carolus Magnus.
After Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor (the title itself
a reference to antiquity), a new style was introduced at his
court. It was important for Napoleon to establish his credibility with his own entourage and with the other European
courts, which had grudgingly to recognize him. To do this,
he set out to surpass in splendor the memory of the past
monarchy by imposing a style that would be unquestionably
his own-and the old buildings of Paris quickly saw his
monogrammed N replaced the L of th~ Bourbon kings.
The lack of a truly great "high art" during the Napoleonic period can be accounted for by the huge political propaganda effort into which the nation's creative energies were
entirely funneled. But the applied arts did indeed flourish
and even the most politically pointed efforts were imbued
with aesthetic qualities of a high level. French decorative
objects were dispatched throughout Europe as diplomatic
presents or to furnish the residences taken over by Napoleon's relations or generals, now briskly declared monarchs
themselves. Silversmiths and goldsmiths such as Thomire,
furniture designers such as Jacob or Bennais can be considered among the greatest artists of their time. Their designs,
usually based on classical prototypes or, after the conquest of
Egypt by Bonaparte, Egyptian motifs, are striking in their elegance, originality, and the high quality of their craftsmanship.
Despite David's attempt during the Revolution to abolish
the system established under the ancien regime for the training of artists, officials of the Napoleonic administration kept
it alive. During Bonaparte's reign artists were taught as they
had been for centuries: The highest prize for a young artist
was still the Prix de Rome that would allow him to spend a
few years perfecting his skills through the study and copy
of antique models and the Old Masters. The system had its
advantages: At worst, it produced perfectly competent, if
wholly unoriginal, artists; at best, it incited gifted painters to
exceed the limits imposed upon them. It is perhaps symptomatic of the democratic aspect of the arts under Napoleon that two of his favorite painters, Gros and Gerard-both
made barons in recognition of their merit -did not have
a chance or failed to win the Prix de Rome. Their bland
styles, geared in Gros's case to the glorification of the emperor's military triumphs and in Gerard's to a fashionable
portrait style, are typical of the sort of art most appreciated
under Napoleon: pleasant, decorative, even imposing-but
13

a far cry from the spare purity of David's early compositions. David himself was not always supportive of their works,
especially if they departed in the slightest from the norms
he had established.
Girodet is an example of a gifted painter who, though
brought up in the classical tradition, can be credited with
introducing Romantic themes into French painting. He was
the first artist in France to use themes derived from Ossian,
the alleged author of"Nordic" poetry that was of tremendous
influence on artists at the turn of the century, even though
it was quickly revealed that these sagas were adroit modern
pastiches. David avowed not to understand what his former
pupil was doing. Such unorthodoxy was for him wholly out
of place, and it must have been with relief that he welcomed
the majestic image of Napoleon (Paris, Musee de l'Armee)
executed in 1806 by another of his pupils,]. A. D. Ingres, in
which the ruler is represented as a seated Zeus, wearing the
emblems of his power.
Justly regarded as David's most gifted pupil, Ingres can
be considered the most important painter of the first half
of the nineteenth century in France. Through his own teachings, a long and busy career, and the dedication of his pupils to the principles he laid down, his work became a point
of reference for his contemporaries as well as for many later
artists. By strict Davidian standards, Ingres's art is unorthodox. Attracted at an early age by the perfection of Raphael's
drawing and by the sweetness of the Umbrian master's compositions, the young painter abandoned antique sculpture
and even classical themes as basis of his art. The drawings
of John Flaxman, the British illustrator, and the decorations of Greek vases upon which those drawings were based,
provided Ingres a further incentive to explore the expressive
power of line drawing.
Ingres arrived in Rome in 1806, the year he painted the
impressive official image of Napoleon. Yet, unlike David
-whose career seemed to advance like an unwavering arrow
-Ingres's sensibility moved during these early years in
several directions. Official portraits, as the one he did of
Napoleon, could have been his life's work. But in Rome he
perfected a type of private portrait, both in drawing and
painting (see Plates 46-49) that can be seen as the culmination of the traditional "Grand Tour portrait." His sitters,
like Batoni's, are often posed before views of Italy (the inclusion of such keenly observed natural views and atmospheric effects bespeaks Ingres's repressed talent for landscape).
Yet there is nothing rigid in the way the subjects greet the
spectator. Superb likenesses, a masterly rendering of textures, and a rare perfection of surface lend an immediacy
to these portraits, which occupied Ingres throughout his
career. It was an academic art, but it transcended the narrow limits of the genre.
Ingres's independence from David can be witnessed in
many aspects of his work: in the small compositions with
medieval or Renaissance subjects, a genre favored by certain
Romantic painters; in his rare landscapes; and in a personal
and sophisticated reformulation of genre painting. Ingres's
original style has its antecedents in French painting: David,
of course, but also Poussin are at the roots of his art. In fact,
for many visitors to the 1824 Salon the juxtaposition of In14

gres's Vow of Louis XIII with Delacroix's Massacre at Chios must

have appeared as a strangely updated reenactment of the
century-old dispute between the "Poussinistes" and the "Rubenistes" -between the tenets of a cool and classical style
and those of an art based on the expressiveness of color.
The old dispute was intensified by the personalities of the
two painters, so at odds with one another. In the heated
atmosphere of a period that had not forgotten the triumphs
of Napoleon and was about to enter an age of revolutionary
upheavals, the two paintings were almost political statements.
One, representing the dedication of France to the Virgin by
Louis XIII, could only be seen as a celebration of the traditional values of the Bourbon restoration. And the other,
the brutal description of a contemporary event, stirred
"modern" Panhellenic feelings and expressed sympathy for
a struggle of national liberation.
If Delacroix's statement was blatant, it was certainly not
the first attempt to paint in a manner contrary to academic
tradition. In 1818-19 Theodore Gericault had painted his
masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, depicting a horrendous,.
contemporary event. Its unorthodox execution achieved a
dignity and heroism comparable only to the greatest compositions of David. Delacroix had known and admired Gericault and had even served as a model for one of the figures
in The Raft. Delacroix, who was to become the standardbearer for the Romantic movement in France, had a background totally different from that of Ingres. Although he
had been apprenticed for a brief time to Pierre Guerin, a
pupil of David's, it was his study of the Old Masters and the
works of some of his contemporaries that shaped his style.
Unlike Ingres, it was not toward Raphael or the other masters of drawing that he turned but rather to the more ebullient world of Rubens and the Venetians. Rubens was rarely
proposed as an example to young painters of the time even
though Paris was the repository of some of his most grandiose compositions. Delacroix also admired Goya and, like
Gericault, the artists of the British school. He himself was a
friend of Richard Parkes Bonington and learned the technique of watercolor, so much a trademark of that school.
He also favored a new type of subject matter: tales generally drawn from such writers as Dante and Shakespeare, as
well as from his contemporaries, Sir Walter Scott, Lord
Byron, and Alexandre Dumas. For this he was often criticized by some of the more conservative upholders of the
classical tradition. Delacroix's compositions were increasingly
accepted by the public despite-or perhaps because of
-their originality. The sheer brilliance of his palette-enhanced by a trip to Morocco during which he made many
life studies-and his fresh approach to history painting were
seen by many (notably writers such as Theophile Gautier
and Charles Baudelaire) as the only hope for liberating
French painting from the restraints of the moribund academic tradition.
Among the foreign artists exhibiting at the 1824 Salon
were many British watercolorists. Constable was represented
by The Hay Wain (1821, London, National Gallery), a picture
that retains on a large scale the fresh and direct observation
of nature usually reserved for sketches. The impact of such
an unexpected approach to painting was felt immediately

by many French artists who found in the achievements of

the British school another welcome alternative to the academic discipline.

ngland had provided a fertile ground for the N eoclassical movement, particularly in architecture and the
design of interiors and furniture. The porcelain production
of the Wedgwood factory, which employed designs by John
Flaxman, had popularized this style throughout the British
Isles. Sculpture, which could better imitate antique models
than other artistic mediums, continued the tradition of Ca. nova well into the nineteenth century. Nollekens (see Plate
67) or Francis Chantrey, the latter with increasing realism,
offer brilliant examples of such adaptations. Painting was,
however, less dogmatic. Reynolds's interpretation of the antique had been most original, as had been Fuseli's. Concepts
in garden design formulated in the early part of the eighteenth century by Richard Boyle led to a wholly new and
refreshing way of contemplating nature. This new relationship of man to nature had a very real impact on the British
landscape painters. For them, nature was not to be reorganized on the canvas according to intellectual rules, instead
it was to provide a wealth of emotion, from peaceful contemplation to awe-inspired admiration. Two major artists
represent the poles between which British landscape painters
mediated: J. M. W. Turner and John Constable.
Starting out as a painter of topographical views, Turner,
in the early years of the nineteenth century, was one of the
first art~sts 'actually to paint an entire picture wholly on the
site. By 1812 he had created pictures of such magnitude as
Snow Storm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps (London, Tate Gallery),
a work that combines direct observation of nature with a
manipulation of light learned from Claude and, above all,
total confidence in the suggestive power of pure paint. Yet
this feeling for the sublime was not Turner's only mode.
His visits to Italy produced works such as Venice, the Grand
Canal (Plate 84), in which changing atmospheric effects are
particularly deftly suggested. Turner's innovations as a colorist are immense. Constable referred to paintings such as Venice
as a "golden vision." Indeed, the coherence of the painting is
not achieved through a solid composition (although the view
is rather firmly framed by the buildings on either side of
the canal) so much as by the radiance of the predominating
pole and the yellow hues that dissolve sky, water, and buildings into a unified painterly space. Later, the Impressionists
would clearly learn from this and similar examples.
Compared to Turner's compositions, Constable's appear
extraordinarily focused, as if the painter had tried to express his profound attachment to his native Suffolk without
any further need to explore the mysteries of nature. Sketches
were particularly important to Constable; they constituted
the prime notations of atmosph~ric effects and, in the case
of cloud studies, helped the artist to determine his color
harmonies. For all its lack of pretense and attachment to
reality and craftsmanship, Constable's art is anything but
simple-minded. His paintings reveal not only sophisticated
compositions but also a realism achieved through imaginative
and painstaking reflection on nature and the value of color.
Constable's immediate influence on French painting is ele-

gantly revealed by the fact that Delacroix, upon seeing Constable's paintings before the opening of the 1824 Salon, felt
the urge to alter the background of his own Massacre at Chios.
French painters had indeed much to learn from the British
landscapists. The genre itself had made a timid entry into
the official world of the Academy as late as 1817 when a
special Prix de Rome for landscape painting was instituted.
The entries, however, were historical landscapes since pure
landscapes were still considered-as they had been since
the seventeenth century-of a lower order.
It is thus not surprising that the best French landscapes-in
the modern sense of the term-were done at the time by
individualistic painters who cared little for the grand tradition and relied almost exclusively on their sense of observation and ability to transcribe their impressions. Jean Baptiste
Corot is perhaps one of the most unusual painters of the
French school. Trained under Achille Etna Michallon and
Jean Victor Bertin-two Neoclassical landscape paintershe was also influenced by Bonington, who inspired him to
adopt a more direct approach. Some of his early works, those
done in Italy for instance, have a freshness of conception
that is surprising in the pictorial context of their time. It is
hard to tell whether Corot considered them fully achieved
works or elaborate cartoons, for next to these delightful studies in light and composition he submitted more elaborate
historical landscapes to the Paris Salons (see Pates 98, 99).
Although his later work was indeed admired by some of the
young Impressionists, his misty, atmospheric effects only
superficially relate to their efforts. Corot's aim was above all
to transmute direct observation of nature into a delicate poetry, something he was also able to achieve in the elusive
mood of his genre scenes (see Plate 100).
Direct observation of nature became increasingly important among French landscape painters such as Theodore
Rousseau or Charles Franc;:ois Daubigny. By strict nineteenthcentury standards, they may even be considered amateur
painters, having had little or none of the training considered professionally necessary at the time. The example of
the slightly older Corot and their own association with kindred artists seeking an alternative to studio painting were
enough to transform these innovators into the welcome
rejuvenators of French landscape painting.

eferred to as painters of the Barbizon School because

of their predilection for working in that area of the
forest near Fontainebleau, they were by no means limited
to that locale. In fact, their works reflect a profound sympathy for the particular qualities of the many places they
painted. Rousseau's works done in the Auvergne, for instance, affect a rough and rustic quality, while his views of
the Vendee reveal an artist sensitive to the more atmospheric
qualities of nature. Especially fascinated by trees and the
light flickering through their branches, Rousseau reached
in his most ambitious and successful canvases a type of overall painting of surprising modernity (see Plate 103). Such
"intellectual" reconstructions-the paintings were often done
from memory-were to be of decisive importance for the
Impressionists. Further, the effect of those majestic canvases
counted significantly in the later development of Symbolism.
15

The vibrant surfaces in Rousseau's paintings in fact suggest

an almost pantheistic conception of the universe.
For these artists, who were witnesses to growing technological and social changes, nature was a last refuge from
reality, and for an artist such as J. F. Millet leaving Paris was
anything but escapism. Educated in a rural milieu, Millet
devoted his talent to the representation of peasant life. He
moved to Barbizon from Paris (where he had lived unhappily for ten years and where his paintings were at first poorly
received) not merely to join a sympathetic community of
artists but also to return to his origins.
It is hardly surprising that in a society that welcomed Rosa
Bonheur's Horse Fair (Plate 110) as a great masterpiece, Millet's images of peasants did not fare well. His vision of nature
is not a happy one: The loveliest sunset only promises a
tomorrow of hard work, and the vastness of his fields are
but a reminder of the strenuous pain of their cultivation. At
a time when the novelist George Sand presented peasants
in idyllic, saccharine novels, Millet shockingly exposed them
on the walls of the Salon in tattered shoes and worn-out
clothes, bent under the weight of their shouldered loads.
From his youth he must have remembered the arduous life
of peasants, and their miserable and hopeless condition. Yet
Millet's images are not pious laments over such realities, and
they transcend the ordinary genre scenes and the narrow
limits of social realism. It is hard to know exactly how Millet
felt about his subjects: His political tendencies may have been
republican or may have been tainted with the kind of patronizing socialism in favor at the time. But whatever his
politics, he was able to make the social message of his paintings even more poignant by lending his subjects a religious
gravity and dignity uncommon in the representations of
rural life. Dignified, even heroic, Millet's peasants are the
icons of a society that has ignored them.
Eschewing the limitations of narrative painting, Millet
painted without models or recourse to nature studies. His
understanding of the nuances of nature was, however, so
profound that, like Rousseau, he could execute from his
own imagination compositions both convincing in their realism and mystical in overtone. Haystacks-Autumn (Plate 106)
is a particularly relevant example. The towering haystacks
dominate the composition in an almost apocalyptic landscape, as if Rembrandt's three crosses had been suddenly
transformed into masses of hay. The lonely, reduced figure
of the shepherdess, the herd whose formation accentuates
the deep perspective of the landscape enhance the tragic
mood of the picture and remove it from the limits of traditional realism.
Millet was not the only painter to describe the human
condition in such compassionate terms. Honore Daumier
befriended Millet and was to some extent influenced by him.
He, too, painted the lower classes with a poignancy made
more acute by the urban environment in which they are
portrayed. Millet represented his peasants in a complete
communion with the land on which they toiled; Daumier
painted the uprooted characters who in his day were a highly
visible segment of Parisian society, which was itself in a state
of change. The astonishing incongruity of Daumier's most
powerful paintings comes from his transplanting, so to speak,
16

Millet's figures from their rural background into the harshly

inhuman world of the newly industrialized city. His most
famous composition, The Third -Class Carriage (Plate 107),
may be just that: the journey by train to Paris of an uprooted peasant family. One may wonder if the women sitting uncomfortably on the wooden bench will be met at the
station by the man of the family, so conspicuously absent,
and if they have left their traditional world behind them in
order to seek their fortune in the city. But the narrative
elements, which in literature might have furnished the subject for a novel by Balzac or Maupassant, are purposely missing. As a young man Daumier had admired and copied
Goya, and one finds in his compositions the same impassible compassion in the description of human types and miseries. Daumier's work as a caricaturist (see Plate 108) had
taught him to load his images with a punch. In his painted
works he achieves a similar intensity but strives toward a
more elevated representation of the human condition.
The 1848 Revolution had for many artists marked the
end of an era. The atrocious killings that had taken place
on the streets of Paris-so horrifyingly recorded by Jean
Louis Ernest Meissonier-and the clash of social and political values they represented put in question the whole moral
value and social relevance of art. Nature and the idealization of work had provided for artists as different as Rousseau or Millet an alternative to their existential quest.

n answer of a more brutal nature was brought to the

same deliberations by a slightly younger artist, Gustave Courbet. Raised like Millet in a rural environment (the
region of the Jura mountains), Courbet considered Paris to
be the very symbol of corruption, blatantly evidenced in the
kind of socially irrelevant, emasculated art that was shown
in the Salons. Yet his belligerent nature led him to fight the
battle on the very turf of the art establishment: By presenting his works to the jury of the Salon, he sought not so
much acceptance as public confrontation.
Courbet decided at an early age to become an artist and
was apprenticed briefly to two academic painters in Paris.
Announcing a trend common to many progressive painters
of the late nineteenth-century, his frequent visits to the Lou"'"
vre or to the short-lived Galerie Espagnole (a museum of
Spanish art set up by Louis Philippe) proved to be of greater
importance in the shaping of his taste and personality than
his academic studies. The use of color by the Spanish masters
-notably Velazquez and Murillo-and their sharp realism,
combined with the powerful brushstrokes of Frans Hals,
provided Courbet with a viable alternative to the smooth finish and slick surfaces of the French academicians. He also
saw in their examples an honesty and truthfulness to the
model he found severely lacking in the art of his time.
His conviction that art should only concern itself with the
representation of reality and his belief that it was his mission to reform painting along these lines resulted in a series
of ground-breaking works executed in 1849. Among them,
the Burial at Ornans (Paris, Louvre) was perhaps the most
startling. Acclaimed by the avant-garde critics, including the
poet Charles Baudelaire, these pictures caused a scandal
that Courbet, with his sense for publicity, was quick to use in

promoting himself as the leader of the Realist movement.

Young Ladies from the Village (Plate 114), shown at the Salon
of 1852, reiterated the themes and style that had scandalized the public a few years earlier. The picture is indeed still
puzzling. Its skewed perspective and awkward integration
of the figures into the landscape are hardly more acceptable today than they were when they were ridiculed by the
critics in 1852. The picture also contains an element of sharp
social criticism: The three demoiselles are not just charitable
ladies distributing alms to a poor cowherd; overdressed and
haughty, they are obviously "parvenues," typical of the new
breed of social climbers who rid themselves of social guilt
by giving a few sous to the poor. The comment is not just
social-although traditional Christian charity was often attacked by nineteenth-century socialists as an easy alternative to true justice-it is also aesthetic: The painting ridicules
the kind of idyllic peasant-life subjects that were then in
favor with those academic painters who were the misguided
heirs to a tradition harking back to Boucher and Greuze. In
order to describe these painted relatives of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who daydreamed about the sophistication of
the capital, Courbet chose a deceptively naive and vulgar
style that lent force to the topicality of the subject.
Continuously commented upon, acclaimed, and rejected
at the time, Courbet's works continued to scandalize the public. Although some of his paintings were admitted to the
Salon, in a gesture of defiance to the art establishment he
preferred to organize (in 1855 and 1867) his own exhibitions in specially rented spaces. The novelty of this approach
lent him an even greater visibility. By the time of Courbet's
later exhibition, however, many of his paintings no longer
dealt with social issues. But if their subjects were no longer
controversial, their style continued to be so. Landscapes such
as The Source of the Loue (Plate 113) or The Calm Sea (Plate
118) were still unacceptable to many critics because of their
raw realism, extensive use of the palette knife in applying
pigment, and simply because of their audacious originality.
It is perhaps more than a coincidence that the unadorned
here-and-now quality of these landscapes finds a counterpart only in the explorations of artists working with the thennew medium of photography (see Plate 117).
Courbet's treatment by the art establishment casts an interesting light on the politics of art under the Second Empire. Young Ladies from the Village was first bought by the
emperor's half-brother. Although discreet, semiofficial patronage of the most advanced painters often took place in
those days, Courbet's nude, the Woman with a Parrot (Plate
115), shocked the prudish Empress Eugenie, and its promised purchase by the state never took place.
Under the Second Empire the arts enjoyed a revival. Public commissions, an ambitious building program, and the
official support of many artists had once again turned the
eyes of the world toward Paris as the artistic capital sans
pareil. The disasterous politics of Napoleon III were ameliorated to a certain extent by his desire to reestablish the
tradition of arts partonage that his uncle, Napoleon I (and
before him the Bourbons), had so successfully carried out.
Typically, many of the artists particularly in favor with Napoleon III, his court, and the art establishment were those

content to do little but give old formulas, as it were, a fresh

coat of paint. Alexandre Cabanel, the emperor's favorite
painter, was entrusted with the decoration of many buildings as well as commissions for easel paintings. He somehow managed to reconcile the allegorical world of Boucher
with the cold technique of an uninspired pupil of Ingres.
In portrait painting, despite much original work going on
among more advanced artists, the favorite of the court was
F. X. Winterhalter. An artist of German origin but of truly
cosmopolitan career and upbringing, he reformulated in
his many portraits of Empress Eugenie (see Plate 120), for
instance, the grace and spirited animation, which, a century
earlier, had established the success of the Rococo painters.
The obsession of Second Empire society with the eighteenth
century bespoke a desire to avoid facing the harsh social
realities of the time. The fashionably huge crinolines, so
flagrantly impractical for those using the new public transportation, and the proliferation of Sevres porcelain painted
in the manner of the eighteenth century are only two examples of this need to live in an illusion of the past.
In the best instances, however, the revival of earlier styles
could result in works of great originality, for example, the
sculpture of]. B. Carpeaux, whose Ugolino (Plate 109) embodied in the eyes of its contemporaries a spirit and masterly technique worthy of Michelangelo and launched the
artist's career. Important commissions were subsequently
given to him, such as the famous group Dance for the fa<;ade
of the new Paris Opera or official portraits of the emperor
(Plate 122), works that betray the artist's sympathy for Baroque sculpture (Bernini's in particular) and yet offer a
wholly new spirit and energy.
It was not just the eighteenth century that captivated the
spirit and imagination of this society on its way to industrialization and technological progress. For many artists the
world of the Renaissance or of medieval times exerted an
equally strong fascination. In France an architect like Violletle-Duc painstakingly restored medieval castles and churches.
In England William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement revived the centuries-old traditions of the craft guilds
in a desperate effort to resist the encroachment of modern
industrialization (see Plates 88, 89), while the pallid medieval evocations of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (see Plate 90)
conjured up the images and values of a chivalric world at
odds with the soot and squalor of England's burgeoning
industrial centers.

wo mysterious images of startling originality may well

serve as a kind of epilogue to the age. The first is the
Oedipus and the Sphinx of Gustave Moreau (Plate 112): Instead of finding in antiquity the heroic clarity that had so
often helped his comrades define a new language, Moreau
can offer only an image of unyielding interrogation and
impenetrable riddle. The other is a photograph by the Mayer
and Pierson firm of the Countess Castiglione (Plate 121),
who casts a cryptic glance at us from behind a mask she
holds to her eye, a gaze as enigmatic as the period in which
she lived.

]. Patrice Marandel
17

1 AncientRome, 1757
Giovanni Paolo Pannini
Italian (Rome), 1691-1765
Oil on canvas; 67% x 90 1/2 in.
(172.1 x 229.9 em.)
Gwynne Andrews Fund, 1952
(52.63.1)

GIOVANNI PAOLO PANNINI

Ancient Rome and Modern Rome

By the beginning of the eighteenth century serial views of
famous monuments or landscapes had become a staple of
the interior decoration of Continental palaces and English
country houses. A number of artists, primarily in Italy, maintained large studios with many assistants in order to meet
the demand for picturesque views. Canaletto, his nephew
Bernardo Bellotto, and Francesco Guardi, all based in Venice, are the best known of the view painters, but in capricci
-fantastic renderings of imaginary scenes-they were surpassed by their Roman contemporaries Giovanni Battista
Piranesi and Giovanni Paolo Pannini.
These two paintings, executed at the high point of
Pannini's career, are among the artist's most brilliant inventions, illustrating the great monuments of imperial and papal
Rome with a unique formula. Combining the Flemish tradition of picture-gallery scenes with the Italian tradition of
architectural views, Pannini depicts Rome in a series of paint-

18

2 ModernRome, 1757

ings arranged on the walls of an imaginary, sumptuous, navelike space. They were commissioned by the artist's friend
and patron, the comte de Stainville, later due de Choiseul,
who stands with a book and walking stick before Pannini's
copy of the Aldobrandini Wedding in Ancient Rome (Plate 1).
De Stainville was in many ways the quintessential eighteenthcentury nobleman: well traveled, well read, clever in his business affairs, an able courtier and diplomat who indulged in
voracious collecting of painting, sculpture, and art objects.
Among the celebrated monuments shown in Ancient Rome
are the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and Trajan's Column, as
well as the Farnese Hercules and the Laocoon. In the center of
Modern Rome (Plate 2) is Michelangelo's Moses; on the walls
are views primarily of the work of Bernini: the square of
Saint Peter's, the Piazza Navona, and many of his fountains;
while the marbles of lJavid and Apollo and Daphne are framed
by the colonnade at the rear.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Italian (Rome), 1691-1765
Oil on canvas; 67% x 91% in.
(172.1 x 233 em.)
Gwynne Andrews Fund, 1952
(52.63.2)

19

3 Diana and Cupid, 1761

POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI

Diana and Cupid

The son of a goldsmith, Pompeo Batoni demonstrated in
his early paintings a love of polish and precision that became the hallmark of his mature style. Coupled with a genuine taste for antiquity and a facility for elegant draftsmanship, Batoni's natural gifts and acquired skills propelled him
to the position of preeminent Neoclassical painter in Rome.
By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Batoni was
widely considered the greatest living painter in Italy, and
this picture was regarded by the circle of his patrons in Rome
-wealthy English dilettantes-as "the best picture [the artist]
ever made."
Diana and Cupid in many ways epitomizes the Italian Neoclassical style: It makes a learned reference to antiquity,
both in the pose of Diana, which Batoni derived from a
marble statue of Ariadne in the Vatican collection, and in
the scene he depicts, which he took from Ovid's Metamorphoses; it is conceived in a sweet and felicitous color scheme;
and it is executed with a suave, smoothly articulated vocabulary of forms.

20

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni

Italian (Rome), 1708-87
Oil on canvas; 49 x 68 in. (124.5 x 172.7 em.)
Purchase, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Robert Lehman
Foundation, Inc., Mrs. Haebler Frantz, April R. Axton,
L.H.P. Klotz and David Mortimer Gifts; and Gifts of Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, George Blumenthal and J. Pierpont
Morgan, Bequests of Millie Bruhl Fredrick and Mary Clark
Thompson and Rogers Fund, by exchange, 1982 (1982.438)
Opposite: detail

GAETANO GANDOLFI

Alexander Presenting Campaspe to Apelles

Ubaldo Gandolfi, his younger brother, Gaetano, and the
latter's son, Mauro, represent the last flowering of a glorious tradition in Bolognese figurative painting that was begun
in the last years of the sixteenth century by the members of
another distinguished family of artists, the Carracci. Gaetano,
the most celebrated of the Gandolfi, enjoyed an international reputation and painted not only for Italian patrons
but also for clients in Austria, England, and Russia.
This softly modeled black-chalk drawing by Gaetano-a
late sheet done in 1797 -is classical in both subject matter
and composition. It reflects a growing Neoclassicism that began to appear in his work during the last decade of his life.

4 Alexander Presenting Campaspe to Apelles, 1797

Gaetano Gandolfi
Italian (Bologna), 1734-1802
Black chalk, heightened with white, on brownish
paper; 12 1/16 x 16% in. (30.6 x 42.9 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1962 (62.132.3)

22

5 Johann j oachim Winckelmann (1717-68)

Anton Raphael Mengs
German, 1728-79
Oil on canvas; 25 x 19% in.
(63.5 x 49.2 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1948 (48.141)

ANTON RAPHAEL MENGS

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Anton Raphael Mengs, who was extremely active during
the middle of the eighteenth century in a number of European cities, including Dresden, Rome, and Madrid, is remembered as much for his association with the historian
Johann Joachim Winckelmann as for his easel paintings or
the grand decorative cycles on which he worked. Mengs met
Winckelmann in Rome in 1755. They worked together on a
catalogue of the ancient sculpture in the Belvedere court at
the Vatican and struck a deep friendship. The year before,
Winckelmann had published his first treatise, Thoughts on
the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, and
in 1760-61 Mengs painted the first full exposition of the
work: the Pamassus for Cardinal Albani. This programmatic

painting embodied precisely the ideals that Winckelmann

had promulgated: "For us," he wrote, "the only way to become great and, if possible, inimitable is by imitation of the
ancients."
Through Winckelmann's eyes, Mengs developed an appreciation of antiquity sufficient to establish himself as one
of the chief proponents, after Jacques Louis David, of the
Neoclassical style in Europe. In his portraits, however, he
retained a Baroque incisiveness, evident here. Mengs rendered with great sensitivity Winckelmann's fine features,
posing him casually, as if he had been interrupted while
reading Homer's Iliad. The portrait probably was painted
around 1761.
23

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI

Prisoners on a Projecting Platform

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a native of Venice, but he
went to Rome at twenty and-except for one short trip and
one two-year stay back in Venice-lived the rest of his life in
the ancient city that was to be the inspiration for and subject
of most of his more than one thousand etchings.
Piranesi studied architecture, engineering, and stage design, and his first plans for buildings reveal this background
combined with the tremendous impact of classical Roman
architecture. The fourteen plates depicting prisons, probably Piranesi's best-known series, were described on the title
page as "capricious inventions" when they were first published in 1749-50. These structures, their immensity emphasized by the low viewpoint, derive from stage prisons
rather than real ones-real prisons of Piranesi's day in Italy
were tiny dungeons-and in fact the image shown here is
the only one of the set that shows prisoners. But where are
they? On a projecting platform that has no logical reason
for being and that is attached, in ways that are unclear, to

6 Prisoners on a Projecting Platform,

Plate X of Carceri, 17 49-60

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Italian, 1720-78
Etching with engraving, sulphur tint or open bite,
burnishings; 16 1/2 x 21% in . (41.7 x 55.3 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1937 (37.45.3 [33])

giant pilings. A ghostly figure seems to be watching them

from the lower left. Such anomalies, and the many spatial
ambiguities, are deliberate and are characteristic of the series. By calling the images "invented prisons," Piranesi was
free to depict massive unadorned blocks that would express
the vastness and strength he experienced in contemplating
Roman architecture. The prints probably also carry echoes
of Piranesi's boyhood experience of watching men build the
great seawalls of Venice.
Piranesi was one of just a few great printmakers who were
not also great painters. Giuseppe Vasi, an etcher of Roman
views who was, briefly, Piranesi's teacher, said that Piranesi
was "too much a painter to be an etcher." But, as the eminent
Piranesi scholar Andrew Robinson wrote in connection with
this remark: "To the contrary, Piranesi was so much a 'painter'-concerned with grandeur of form, light, tone, space,
and mass and able to create these effects swiftly and directly
-that he was a truly exciting printmaker."

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI

The Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum

Piranesi's Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome) were not produced
as a finite set but rather were made over a period of some
thirty years, from 17 48 until the artist's death. They were
sold as souvenirs for the lay public to take home from the
Grand Tour, serving also as advertisements for the splendors of Rome. For some visitors, they fulfilled the latter
function all too well: Goethe, for example, was disappointed
when he got to Rome; the buildings did not look nearly so
grand as Piranesi's etchings had led him to expect. The Vedute
are not "inventions," like the Prisons, but are accurate renditions of the ancient Rome to which, in a sense, Piranesi's life
was dedicated. His love of the Roman buildings was that of
an archaeologist, and his less well-known works include detailed and exact renditions of the great utilitarian structures
that made it possible for the Roman Empire to function. In
the words of A. Hyatt Mayor:

7 The Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum, 17 50s

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Italian, 1720-78
Etching; 15% x 21% in. (40.4 x 54.5 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund , 1937 (37.45.3 [65])

He went at Rome's weedy lumps of ruin like an anatomist at a

cadaver, stripping, sectioning, sawing until he had established
the structure in all its layers and functions . Sometimes he removed accretions from columns embedded in the slums of
Rome until he laid them bare like bones in a loneliness of
sand. His method is the method of autopsy, and his books
rank with the great books of anatomy, for he was the first,
and remains the most dramatic, dissector of ruin.

Here the artist shows the Colosseum in a view from the

Palatine Hill, in which, because of the accidents of destruction, the complexities of its structures are revealed. Yet
Piranesi's scientific sense was matched by his aesthetic one,
and the balance and liveliness of the composition, as well as
the shimmer of light created by the parallel squiggles of
etched lines, give the print an effect that completely transcends the documentary.

8 Console Table, ca. 1782-92

Attrib. to Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo

Italian, 1745-1820
Painted and gilded poplar, marble top;
36V2 X 57 X 25 1/2 in. (92.7 X 144.8 X 64.8 em.)
Rogers Fund, by exchange, 1970 (1970.4)
Above: detail

GIUSEPPE MARIA BONZANIGO

Console Table
This magnificent semicircular console table, displaying elaborate carving, is likely to have been executed by sculptor
and furniture maker Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo. It may have
been made as a royal commission, since Bonzanigo was extensively employed by Victor Amadeus III of Savoy. Comparable pieces by Bonzanigo are found in the Palazzo Reale
in Turin and in the royal hunting lodge in Stupinigi, just
outside that city. The table's gilded decoration consists of
foliated scrolls, birds, griffins, sphinxes, and other fantastic
animals as well as mythological figures in hexagonal medallions. Its Neoclassical ornament, based largely on engravings by Michelangelo Pergolesi, and the elegant openwork
legs are exquisitely refined in design and execution.

9 Fan with ScenRs of Vesuvius and Pompeii

Italian, 1786
Painted parchment leaf, sticks and guards of tortoise
shell with gilt-metal decoration, glass stud;
L. 10"/~'~ in. (27 em.), W. 20 in. (50.8 em.)
Gift of Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, 1963 (63.90.26)

FAN WITH SCENES OF VESUVIUS AND POMPEII

The Grand Tour, or extended travel on the European continent, began in the seventeenth century as an educational
experience for the ruling classes, but by the later eighteenth
century it had become de rigueur for well-bred English and
American gentlemen. Of the many places on the Continent
visited, Italy held greatest importance, particularly the cities and environs Rome, Venice, Florence, and Naples. The
latter became even more important following the 1748 excavation of Pompeii and the increasingly frequent eruptions
of Vesuvius.
In lieu of picture postcards, fans-or just the painted
leaf-with depictions of the major sites (identified, lest one
forget) could be purchased. Typically, the leaf would show

three scenes. In this example the center, dated 1786, depicts

a nocturnal view of activity at Vesuvius. To either side are
views of Pompeii. At the left the scene is identified as "Avanti
colonnata del quartiere de' Soldati di Pompei," or the soldiers' quarters. In reality what is shown are several of the
seventy-four Doric columns that formed a portico around
the square connecting two theaters. The misnomer dates
from 1766, when excavations in the area produced greaves,
helmets, and weapons. The "Porta del Pompei" shown at
right is rendered in sufficient detail to identify it as the
Herculaneum Gate. Classical motifs used in the decorations
at Pompeii inspired the designs that fill the interstitial spaces
on the front leaf as well as the grotesques on the back.

27

ANTONIO CANOVA

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

The Venetian Antonio Canova was the preeminent sculptor
of the age of Neoclassicism and a prodigiously talented
carver of marble. This medium was quintessentially suited
to the taste of the age, and in Canova's hands it yielded
brilliant effects, at once pristine and sensual, that fulfilled the
notions of a classical past embraced by his contemporaries.
Here Perseus stands coolly triumphant, holding aloft the
severed head of the snake-haired gorgon Medusa, the sight
of which will turn into stone anybody gazing upon it. His
pose and demeanor vividly recall that of the Apollo Belvedere, the work of antiquity most admired in Canova's era.
But the extended sweep of Perseus's cloak endows the figure with a buoyant elan quite unlike its self-contained classical forerunner, and the sleek majesty and streamlined
lyricism mark this unmistakably as the work of its own age.
Although Canova was the sculptor associated more than
any other with the Napoleonic era, he was content to work
for patrons of varying political convictions. The first version
of the Perseus had, in fact, been acquired by Pope Pius VII
as a replacement for the Apollo Belvedere itself, one of the
Greek sculptures that Napoleon had removed from the Vatican and shipped to the Louvre upon his conquest of Italy.
The understudy succeeded so handsomely that when the
Congress of Vienna compelled the restitution of the Napoleonic booty, the Vatican retained Canova's composition as
a companion to the returned Apollo. This second, slightly
revised version of the composition was acquired by a young
Polish couple, Count and Countess Tarnowski, who had seen
it in Canova's studio on their Grand Tour visit to Rome.
10 Perseus with the Head of Medusa,

1804-06
Antonio Canova
Italian, 1757-1822
Marble; H. 86% in. (217 em.)
Fletcher Fund, 1967 (67.110.1)

28

29

JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE

Broken Eggs
Jean Baptiste Greuze, extolled by Denis Diderot as one of
the greatest painters of his day, was a principal proponent
of the shift in emphasis in French painting from scenes of
pleasurable pursuits, in the manner of Jean Antoine Watteau and Franc,;:ois Boucher, to objects of moral instruction,
in the manner of Jacques Louis David. From the beginning
of his career Greuze demonstrated a predilection for genre
scenes, and through engravings of these pictures, as well as
through public prompting by critics like Diderot, his pictures of moments of awakening conscience in the lives of
ordinary people exerted considerable influence on contemporary painting.
Greuze painted Broken Eggs (Plate 11) in Rome in 1756,
30

soon after his arrival there for study. When it was exhibited
in Paris the following year, it bore a long title that specified
its moralizing tone: A Mother Scolding a Young Man for Having Upset a Basket of Eggs that the Servant Girl Brought from the
Market; A Child Attempts to Put an Egg Back Together. Even to
the unsophisticated observer, the broken eggs would have
been understood as a symbol for lost virginity; fortunately,
in this instance we have an explanation of the picture by the
well-versed critic of contemporary mores, the abbe J. J.
Barthelemy:
A girl had a basket of eggs; a young man toyed with her, the
basket fell, and the eggs were broken. The girl's mother ar-

11 Broken Eggs, 17 56
Jean Baptiste Greuze
French,1725-1805
Oil on canvas; 28:% x 37 in. (73 x 94 em.)
Bequest of William K . Vanderbilt, 1920
(20.155.8)

12 Head of a Girl Looking Up

Jean Baptiste Greuze
French, 1725-1805
Red chalk; 13 7/ Hx lll/H in.
(35.3 x 28.4 em.)
Rogers Fund , 1949 (49 .131.2)

rives, seizes the young man by the arm and demands compensation for the eggs; the bewildered girl is seated on the
floor; the embarrassed young man makes the worst excuses in
the world, and the old woman is in a fury; a child thrown into
the corner of the picture takes one of the broken eggs and
tries to repair it . . . the figure of the girl has a pose so noble
that she could embellish a history painting.

Naturally, virginity cannot be restored once lost, any more

than an egg can be repaired once broken, thus the uncomprehending determination of the young boy throws into
greater relief the agitation of the girl's mother. This painting, along with its pendant, The Neapolitan Gesture (Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum), was engraved;

the prints were sold together and they were circulated widely.
Greuze paid particular attention to the facial expressions
and gestures of the figures in his compositions in order to
convey with the greatest possible clarity the emotion and
drama of the scene.
The beautiful drawing of a young girl (Plate 12) is a fine
example of Greuze's consummate ability as a draftsman and
typical of his many large-scale head studies, which, executed
in chalk, were not always drawn with specific paintings in
mind but, like them, were sometimes later engraved for
prints. Although not connected with a specific painting,
Head of a Girl Looking Up, was engraved in reverse by Pierre
Charles Ingouf the elder.

31

13 Wall Fountain with a Nymph Drying Her Hair, 1763

Louis Claude Vasse

French, 1716-72
Marble; H. of figure 59 in. (149.9 em.) Purchase,
Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation,
Inc. and Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation,
Inc. Gifts and Rogers Fund, 1971 (1971.205)
Above: detail

LOUIS CLAUDE VASSE

Wall Fountain with a Nymph Drying Her Hair

This fountain adorned the vestibule of the Chateau de Dampierre. It was carved for the due de Chevreuse, of the Luynes
family in whose keeping it descended until this century.
Water filled the basin through the jaws of the snakes beneath the curves of the outsize shell. While the sight and
the sound of water must have done much to enliven the
composition, it is the nymph herself that most successfully
carries the aquatic imagery. She stands as if transported from
a river's edge, squeezing moisture from her soaked tresses.
The urn at her side bears a relief of Pan pursuing Syrinx,

a nymph who escaped from Pan's amorous assault by being

transformed into a water reed.
There is manifest delight in the control of the nymph's
pose, her arm hooked above and framing her head with its
look of delicious surprise. Vasse also shows his range in the
selection of ornament, encompassing both the rough supporting shell and the chaste "Vitruvian" scrollwork pattern
below the basin's rim. In sum as in its parts, the composition
encapsulates the classicism of the later Louis XV period at
its most relaxed and assured.

33

34

14 The Stolen Kiss

Jean Honore Fragonard

French,1732-1806
Oil on canvas; 19 x 25 in. (48.3 x 63.5 em.)
Gift of Jessie Woolworth Donahue, 1956
(56.100.1)

jEAN HoNORE FRAGONARD

The Stolen Kiss

Almost four years after winning the coveted Prix de Rome in
1752 with a large historical painting, Jeroboam Sacrificing to
the Idols (Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts), Jean Honore Fragonard left Paris for Italy. Under the directorship of Charles
Joseph Natoire at the French Academy in Rome, Fragonard
followed a course of study that progressed from copying
the Italian Baroque painters Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni,
and the Carracci, to working from nature in the Roman
Campagna. His study of the Italians, with their rich color
harmonies and dramatic lighting, had an immediate impact
on his art. Indeed, the composition and bold play of chiaroscuro in The Stolen Kiss, painted during Fragonard's Italian
sojourn, arguably owe some debt to Pietro da Cortona's
example. While the palette and atmospheric effects of this
picture anticipate Fragonard's style of the mid-1760s, his
treatment of the figures-especially at left and in the background-nevertheless reminds us that Fragonard was trained
under Francois Boucher.
35

jEAN HoNORE FRAGONARD

Le Dessinateur
The grace, elegance, and seemingly effortless competence
of his draftsmanship have long made jean Honore Fragonard
a favorite with drawing collectors. As early as 1765, when
a group of Italian landscape drawings by the artist was exhibited in the Salon, Pierre Jean Mariette-one of history's
greatest connoisseurs-had nothing but praise for Frago-

nard's abilities. The use of black chalk in the garden scene

reproduced here is somewhat unusual for Fragonard: More
often than not, he chose red chalk for his drawn landscape
compositions. Le Dessinateur is one of three fine drawings
by Fragonard that came to the Metropolitan Museum with
the Robert Lehman Collection.

15 Le Dessinateur
Jean Honore Fragonard
French,1732-1806
Black chalk; 135/Kx 9 1/2 in.
(34 .6 x 24.2 em .)
Robert Lehman Collection,
1975 (1975 .1.626)

36

16 L'Armoire, 1778
Jean Honore Fragonard
French, 1732-1806
Etching; 16 1/:~ x 2F/H in. (42 x 51.3 em.)
Purchase, Roland L. Redmond Gift,
Louis V. Bell and Rogers Funds, 1972
(1972.539.2)

jEAN HONORE fRAGONARD

L'Armoire
Fragonard made, in addition to his paintings and drawings,
thirty etchings, including some original landscapes inspired
by a trip to Italy and plates after paintings by Italian masters.
Most of these were made in 1763--'-64. He then did no more
etching until 1778, when he produced L'Armoire, his largest
and most complex print. The story is clear: The amorous
encounter of the young couple, evidenced by the rumpled
bedclothes, was interrupted; the young man quickly hid in
the closet but was discovered by the irate older couple, probably the girl's parents. The young man steps out shamefacedly, holding his hat over his groin, while the young woman

wipes her eyes on her apron. The children standing at the

foot of the bed seem anxious about the outcome of the drama;
the others, in the doorway, are amused by it.
This kind of theatrical situation with a moral component,
in which the viewer's emotions were meant to be engaged,
was often represented in French art of this period, most
notably in that of Jean Baptiste Greuze. In addition, the
hat, which calls attention to the young man's sexual arousal
at the same time it hides it, would put the print in the category
of estampes galantes, prints showing erotic subjects, which
were sought after by certain collectors of the day.

37

18 The Love Letter

Jean Honore Fragonard

French,1732-1806
Oil on canvas;
32% x 26% in. (83.2 x 67 em.)
The Jules Bache Collection,
1949 (49.7.49)

jEAN FREMIN

Snuffbox
Although introduced into Europe from America as a medicinal aid, the practice of taking snuff became a fashionable social custom by the late seventeenth century. The
powdered tobacco was carried in small boxes with hinged
lids called tabatieres, or snuffboxes.
Snuffboxes in precious or exotic materials were popular
luxury items and were often presented as gifts. All surfaces
of the exquisitely crafted objets, including the bottom, were
decorated because they were not meant to be displayed but
to be handled and carried on the person or in a purse.
Among the Paris goldsmiths who excelled in the production of gold boxes was Jean Fremin. This example from his
workshop exhibits a layering of abstract patterns and naturalistic motifs that is characteristic of Rococo design and
that recalls textiles of the period. Like water stirred by crosscurrents of wind, engraved rocaille scrolls and meandering
ribbons of gold enliven the surfaces of the oval box. Individual leaves and flowers, enameled en plein (directly onto
the surface of the snuffbox), seem to emerge from the engraved and chased surfaces as though floating among shimmering waves of gold. The delicate charm of en plein enameling belies the technical virtuosity required, as each color is
fired at a different temperature. It is likely that an enameler specializing in snuffboxes collaborated with Fremin.

17 Snuffbox, 1756-57
Jean Fremin
French, 1714-86
Gold, enamel, bloodstone, lapis lazuli,
and pearl; L. 3% in. (8.6 em.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman,
1976 (1976.155.14)

38

jEAN HONORE FRAGONARD

The Love Letter

When Jean Honore Fragonard failed to exhibit in the Salon
of 1769, the press rumored that "the lure of profit and the
interest in boudoirs and wardrobes [had] diverted the painter
from striving after glory." It is true that after 1767 Fragonard
had ceased to show in the Salon, abandoning historical and
religious painting for piquant amorous scenes, rustic landscapes, and decorative panels that won him great favor
among a select, private clientele. In the early 1770s, he was
afforded the patronage of the wealthy connoisseur Bergeret
de Grancourt, as well as the celebrated ballet dancer Mademoiselle Guimard; he had also gained entry as decorator
for Madame du Barry, Madame de Pompadour, and Louis
XV at Bellevue, Louveciennes, and Versailles, respectively.
Fragonard, who excelled in depicting the fashionably attired female, endowed his subjects with a charm, liveliness,
and elegance that epitomized and catered to Rococo taste.
The Love Letter, a characteristic work that probably dates to
the 1770s, shows Fragonard's great technical facility-the
spontaneity of his brush and his keen coloristic sense-as
well as a gay imagination and joyful spirit that preclude from
human passion any note of coarseness.
While the subject of this picture is perhaps easily deciphered by the twinkling gaze and mischievous half-smile of
the sitter, who clutches a love note and bouquet of flowers,
the inscription, which is only partly legible, has caused some
debate as to the identity of the young woman dispatching
the letter. The inscription may read simply, "to my cavalier,"
or it may say, "A Monsieur Cuvillier," identifying the recipient
as the son-in-law of the painter Fran<;ois Boucher, and thus
the model as Boucher's daughter, Marie Emilie, the widow
of the painter Baudouin, who in 1773 married Charles
Etienne Gabriel Cuvillier.

39

MELCHIOR RENE BARRE

Two SILK DRESSES

E tui for Sealing Wax

The costume silhouette represented in these two examples

of the style known as the robe a la franr;aise is one of the
most familiar from the eighteenth century. The flowing
backs of these dresses, which identify the style, combine with
the elliptical skirts to mirror the quality of line found in the
other decorative arts of the 1770s. The colors and textures
of the patterned silk textiles indicate a change from the
complex intertwining spatial relationships of earlier motifs
to one more separate and linear. The stripes that become
particularly prominent in the last quarter of the century are
implicit in the placement of the motifs in the earlier green
dress but explicit in the rows of well-spaced painted flowers
between woven strip~s in the later white dress. The luxury
of these silks would have made the dresses among the most
valued possessions of the ladies who wore them.

This etui, of a form designed to hold sealing wax, lacks the

personalized stamp of the owner normally found on the
bottom of such a case. The repertoire of fine Neoclassical
ornament that decorates the two-part cylinder is executed
in a variety of metalworking techniques and in three tones
of gold colored with copper and silver alloys. Trophies consisting of objects associated with pastoral and mythological
romance are suspended from ribbons against the densely
stippled ground; they are references to the exchange of
messages of love in envelopes sealed by wax impressed with
the sender's stamp.

19a Green silk dress (robe a la fran<;aise)

French, ca. 1770
Silk, brocaded in polychrome floral
pattern on textured ground
Rogers Fund, 1932 (CI 32.35.2ab)
19b white silk dress (robe ala fran<;aise)
French, ca. 1778
Silk, with green woven stripes and painted
floral patterns on taffeta ground
Purchase, Irene Lewishohn Bequest, 1954
(CI 54.70ab)
20 Etui for Sealing Wax, 177 5
Melchior Rene Barre
French, d. 1791
Gold; L. 4% in. (ll.8 em.) Bequest of
Kate Reed Blacque in memory of her
husband, Valentine Alexander Blacque,
1938 (38.50.32a,b)

OVERLEAF:

MANTEL CLOCK

(Pages 42-43)

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the making of

cases for French mantel clocks began to pass out of the province of the furniture maker and into the hands of the bronze
founder, porcelain modeler, or marble cutter. French clock
cases were often related to the sculpture and small decorative objects of the period. This fashion continued into the
reign of King Louis XVI, when the carved forms, asymmetrical arrangements, ~nd C scrolls that are the signature of
the Rococo designer were superseded by more formal structures preferred by Neoclassical artists.
This clock represents a transition, being both more monumental and clearly: structured than the Rococo and more
playful and asymmetrical than a true Neoclassical design. A
decorative marble base and gilt-bronze pedestal support the
clock dial in the form of a copper sphere scattered with
gilt-bronze stars and divided by separately revolving hour
and minute rings of enamel and gilt bronze. The figure of
the youthful Eros on the left points with his arrow to the
hour. Above, a cherub holds a wreath of grapes and a floral

swag, and at the right sits Father Time. These three bronzes
match the sculptor Augustin Pajou's own description of part
of a group that he modeled in 1775 for a clock for the
prince de Conde from designs provided by the architect
Claude Billard de Belisard. Together they represent the
Triumph of Love over Tim?. Eros, especially, is very close in
style to the relief figure of Apollo in the foyer of the Opera
at Versailles, commissioned from Pajou in 1770. Signed
"Lepaute a Paris," the movement was supplied by the workshop of one of the most distinguished clockmaking establishments in eighteenth-century France.

21 Mantel Clock
French, ca. 1775-80
Modeled by Augustin Pajou, 1730-1809; after a design
by Claude Billard de Belisard, act. 1772-90; movement
by the Lepaute workshop: Jean Baptiste, 1750-1843;
Pierre Henry, 1745-1805; Pierre Basile, 1750-1843 Case
of gilt bronze, marble, and copper; H. 37 in. (94 em.)
Gift ofJ. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.2126)

41

42

43

HuBERT RoBERT

HuBERT RoBERT

Young Artists in the Studio

The Return of the Cattle

Hubert Robert was an exact contemporary of Jean Honore

Fragonard, whom he knew when they were both students at
the French Academy in Rome. Robert's early interest in architecture and the ruins of classical antiquity was fostered
during his years at the academy by his contact with the great
I tal ian masters Giovanni Paolo Pannini and Giovanni Battista
Piranesi. When he returned to France in 1765, Robert became a key figure in the development of Neoclassical French
art.
To judge from the number of his surviving drawings, Robert was a tireless draftsman. Young Artists in the Studio-no
doubt a work of the Roman period-is a particularly fine
example of his red-chalk draftsmanship. Figural drawings
like this one are far rarer in Robert's oeuvre than are architectural and landscape compositions.

In 1754, two years after securing the patronage of the due

de Choiseul, one of the leading collectors of his day, and of
the marquis de Menars et de Marigny, minister of fine arts,
Hubert Robert left under their auspices to study at the
French Academy in Rome, where he would remain for the
next eleven years. Upon his return to Paris in 1765, the numerous drawings made in Rome and at neighboring villas
were used with endless variation in his paintings.
This picture and its pendant, also in the collection of the
Museum, were exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1775 as The
Return of the Cattle among the Ruins at Sunset and The Portico of
a Country Mansion near Florence. Indeed, the noble Roman
ruins in The Return of the Cattle are evidently based upon
drawings executed in Italy, most notably a sanguine called Le
retour du troupeau, now in the Musee de Valence. The overall
composition is the same, with only a few architectural elements changed: The door on the left surmounted by a pediment in the Valence drawing became in the painting a classical statue in a niche on the right-hand side of the arch,
and the groin vault in the drawing has been exchanged for
a coffered arch.
In this painting we see the alliance of classical Roman
architecture with an everyday contemporary occurrence, the
afternoon return of the cattle. It is this successful blend of
archaeological reminiscence with French naturalism, worked
in delicate tonality, that resulted in the great demand for
the work of Hubert Robert during the eighteenth century.

22 Young Artists in the Studio

Hubert Robert
French,l733-1808
Red chalk; 13 13/16 x 16 1/-t in. (35.2 x 41.2 em.)
Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971 (1972.118.231)

23 The Return of the Cattle

Hubert Robert
French, 1733-1808
Oil on canvas;
80% x 48 in. (205.1 x 121.9 em.)
Bequest of Lucy Work Hewitt,
1934 (35.40.1)

44

46

24 Pair of Vases with Covers

French (Sevres), ca. 1763

Soft-paste porcelain;
H. 22 1/2 and 22 3/16 in. (57.2 and 56.3 em.)
Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, in memory of
Florence Ellsworth Wilson, 1956 (56.80.1,2)

25 Tureen
French (Niderviller factory), ca. 1774-75
Tin-enameled earthenware; L. 15 in. (38 em.)
The Charles E. Sampson Memorial Fund,
1977 (77.378ab)

pAIR OF SEVRES VASES

The move to new plfemises in 17 56 marked the beginning

of a period of great ;experimentation and invention at the
Sevres porcelain factory, when many new models exhibiting
a more restrained Rococo or early Neoclassical style were
developed. The model for these fragile covered vases is presumably that described in a 1763 inventory in the factory
archives. Each vase is in the form of a tower with projecting
cannon muzzles.
The walls are painted with trophies of war and crowns of
laurel, both symbols! of victory. They hang from alternate
openings on ribbons ~nterconnected and entwined with garlands of flowers, oal leaves, and acorns. In this view, the
trophies consist of helmets, weapons, and shields that suggest classical and Turkish origins. Another pair of trophies
includes plans used in the construction of fortifications, a
map of the Kingdom of Naples with tools for measuring
distances, a Roman fasces, and a porphyry vase overflowing
with gold coins.

FAIENCE TUREEN

The profile portrait in the center of the bowl of this tureen

is that of King Louis XV who died in 1774 and in whose
memory this piece may have been made; he was a friend
of the owner of the Niderviller factory, the comte de Custine.
The clay used by the Niderviller factory was exceptionally
fine grained and plastic and produced the most refined of
all French faience. This example blends Rococo motifs
-made orderly and symmetrical-with some of the more
overt and easily assimilated features of the Neoclassical style,
such as the square-angle handles and pine-cone finial.

47

26 Bust of Denis Diderot, 1773

Jean Antoine Houdon
French, 1741-1828
Marble; H. 15% in. (40 em.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Wrightsman, 1974 {1974.291)

27 Bust of Sabine Houdon, 1788

Jean Antoine Houdon

French, 1741-1828
Marble; H. IO'YH in. (27 em.)
Bequest of Mary Stillman
Harkness, 1950 (50.145.66)

48

28 La Frileuse, 1787
Jean Antoine Houdon
French, 1741-1828
Bronze; H. 57 in. (144.8 em.)
Bequest of Kate Trubee
Davison, 1962 (62.55)

jEAN ANTOINE HbunoN

Three Sculptures
Jean Antoine Houdon was the preeminent portraitist of the
Enlightenment; in his work were sublimely realized the era's
virtues of truth to nature, simplicity, and grace. Houdon's
extraQrdinary ability to translate into marble not only his
subject's personality, but also the vibrant essence of living
flesh, ensured his la1sting fame.
Houdon's bust of Denis Diderot (Plate 26), the pivotal
figure of the French Enlightenment, was first modeled in
terra-cotta in 1771 at the behest of Dmitri Galitzine, Russian ambassador to France and good friend of the sitter.
Although Diderot's !thoughts and writings paved the way
for revolution, his incandescent wit, combined with an almost childlike enthusiasm, endeared him to intellectuals and
aristocrats alike. This marble preserves the elusiveness of
his quicksilver charm.
Houdon's canonical portraits of the philosophes (as well as
of America's Founding Fathers) have contributed to his
popularity in America. No less beloved are his depictions of
children, of which the most beautiful may be the head of his
own daughter Sabine (Plate 27). This profoundly individualized portrait is shaped with a classical purity whose severity renders all the more poignant the tender image within.
The delicately naturalistic folds of flesh at the intersection
of Sabine's chest an4 arms are carved with a melting softness that perfectly captures the limpid fragility of infant
skin. Her alert, unsentimentalized features present a personality whose distinction transcends the category of children's portraits.
:,
The sculpture kndwn as La Frileuse (the word denotes a
person susceptible to cold, as well as the head-shawl the girl
wears) (Plate 28) was first modeled in 1781. In this composition Houdon departed decisively from the conventional allegorical treatment of Winter in orde.r to communicate the
most vivid possible impression of a creature suffering from
cold. It was one of the most successful of his larger projects,
and he produced several versions of it; but when a marble
was submitted at the Salon of 1785, its boldness caused consternation. This yet later bronze variant, which the sculptor
was particularly proud of having cast himself, was bought
by the reprobate due d'Orleans. The figure may be less
shocking to modern eyes than when first created, but the
abrupt contrast betwen the fully wrapped upper body and
the bareness of flesh below is still very striking.
1

RooM FROM THE HoTEL DE CABRIS

The Hotel de Cabris in Grasse, based on designs of the littleknown Milanese architect Giovanni Orella, was built between
1771 and 1774 for Jean Paul de Clapiers, marquis de Cabris.
The exceptionally harmonious paneling, or boiserie, made,
carved, and gilded in Paris around 1775-78, may not in
fact have been installed until the first decade of the nineteenth century. A variety of crisply carved and gilded ornament, strongly Neoclassical in character, decorates the boiserie. The curved panels, originally intended as corners for
the room, display trophies of musical instruments. Especially beautiful are the carvings on the four sets of double
doors. Incense burners, or cassolettes, in the shape of an antique tripod, so fashionable in the later eighteenth century,
are found on the upper panels of each door. The panels
below are carved with flaming torches that, like the incense
burners, are surrounded by crossed laurel and olive branches.
The rectangular overdoor panels, as well as the circular
frames above the mirrors, were intended for paintings that
were never executed.

jEAN HENRI RIESENER

Secretaire
Jean Henri Riesener, one of the most important Parisian
cabinetmakers working in the Louis XVI style, received
many commissions from the court and the nobility. Between
1783 and 1787 he executed this resplendent secretaire together with a commode en suite for Marie Antoinette, who
placed both pieces in her apartment at the Chateau de SaintCloud. The presence of Saint-Cloud inventory marks and
the stamp of the Garde Meuble de la Reine, the queen's personal furniture registry, underline the history of the secretaire. Furthermore, Marie Antoinette's monogram appears
among the gilt-bronze floral wreaths on the frieze. Blackand-gold lacquer panels are framed by gilt-bronze sculptured borders and elegantly suspended garlands of naturalistically rendered flowers. The apron is adorned with
cornucopia-shaped mounts overflowing not only with the
bounty of nature, but also with coins, crowns, and the Order
of the Saint-Esprit, symbols of royal magnificence.

29 Room from the Hotel de Cabris, Grasse

French, ca. 1775-78
Carved, painted, and gilded oak;
11ft. 8 1/2 in. x 13ft. 5% in. x 25ft. 6 1/2 in.
(3.56 x 4.24 x 77.7 m.) Purchase,
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift,
1972 (1972.27.6.1,2)

30 Upright Secretaire, ca. 1783-87

Jean Henri Riesener
French, 1734-1806
Japanese lacquer and ebony veneered on oak,
white marble top, and gilt-bronze mounts;
57 X 43 X 16 in. (144.8 X 109.2 X 40.5 em.)
BequestofWilliam K. Vanderbilt, 1920 (20.155.11)

51

PIERRE jULIEN

L'Amour Silencieux
31 L'Amour Silencieux (The Soundless Cupid), 1785

Pierre Julien
French,1731-1804
Terra-cotta; H. 15If4 in. (38.7 em.)
Purchase Charles Ulrick and josephine Bay
Foundation, Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.312.1)

From the seventeenth century on, terra-cotta models were

increasingly prized by collectors as revelations of personal
style. By the end of the eighteenth century, French sculptors often showed their most vivid clay sketches at the Salon
alongside works in nobler mediums. Pierre Julien exhibited
this stealthy Cupid, for instance, at the Salon of 1785. A
sculptor whose scrupulous attention to surface finish surpassed that of any of his contemporaries, Julien lavished a
wealth and variety of treatment upon his subject, stippling
and scraping the wet clay all over. His fingerprints and even
the imprints of thread from the wet cloth that covered the
statuette between modeling sessions are also preserved. It is
possible that Julien did not intend this as a model for a
larger work but that it was destined for a connoisseur's
cabinet from the start.
The Amour Silencieux stems from a rich vein of GrecoRoman subject matter, being based on the Alexandrian deity
Harpocrates, always depicted as a naked boy commanding
silence with his gesture of finger to lips. However, Julien's
Cupid glides through the air with infinitely more urgency
and alertness than any of his prototypes.

CLODION

Model for a Monument to Commemorate the

Invention of the Balloon
Clodion is famous for his terra-cotta statuettes of satyrs and
bacchantes, of which the Metropolitan Museum owns notable examples. This wholly uncharacteristic work (indeed,
there is nothing like it anywhere) was made for a competition among the greatest French sculptors (including Houdon, Julien, and Pajou) for a monument to commemorate
the first ascension of a manned hot-air balloon. This was
achieved by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. An alternative
model by Clodion, known only through photographs, was
a much tamer affair than this work. In this plan, Clodion
pushes allegory to an extreme, swamping Fame and Zephyr
in a dizzying flight of infants. His is an exceedingly bold
essay at monumentalizing flight, the most ephemeral of
subjects. Although the topic could not have been more fashionable, as balloons proliferated in the decoration of objects
of all sorts, the project for a monument came to naught.
For that matter, it is next to impossible to visualize Clodion's
extravaganza in terms of marble statuary.

32 Mode/fora Monument to Commemorate the

Invention of the Balloon, 1784

Claude Michel (called Clodion)

Terra-cotta; H. 43 1/2 in. (110.5 em.)
Purchase, Rogers Fund and Anonymous
Gift, 1944 (44.21)

52

3 3 Room from Bordeaux

French, ca. 1785

Carved and painted pine;
oval, L. 18ft. 1% in. (5.53 m.)
Gift of Mrs. Herbert N. Straus,
1943 (43.158.1)

34 Madame de Wailly, 1789

Augustin Pajou
French,1730-1809
Marble; H. 24 1/2 in. (62.2 em.)
Fletcher Fund, 1956 (56.105)

AuGuSTIN PAJOU
ROOM FROM BORDEAUX

Madame de Wailly

The delicate carving in low relief of the gray-green boiserie

in this room is attrjbuted to the sculptor and wood-carver
Barthelemy Cabriol, who spent most of his working life in
Bordeaux. This oval room, presently arranged to resemble
the setting for a small supper party, may have come from
the Hotel de Saint-Marc, on the Cours d'Albret in Bordeaux.
The finely carved decorations consist of laurel wreaths and
floral garlands above the wall recesses and mirrors. Trophies in the so-called "classical candelabra style," representing music, arts, and agriculture, are found on the vertical
panels. The door lintels are surmounted by trophies as well,
one of which, symbolizing architecture, incorporates objects
such as a compass, a ruler, and a basket overgrown with
acanthus leaves, referring to the alleged origin of the Corinthian capital. Although contemporary with the room, the
white marble chimneypiece does not come from it. An engraving from 1880 depicting this graceful room shows the
original chimneypiece, as well as the radiating pattern of
the wooden floor, now also replaced.

The sitter was the wife of the sculptor's lifelong friend,

Charles de Wailly, his companion from student days in Rome.
De Wailly had built neighboring houses for Pajou and himself and Pajou made busts of the architect and his wife. The
portrait of Madame de Wailly displays the artist's particular
gifts to best advantage. In it the solidity that characterizes
all his work is enlivened by an equally characteristic linearity to produce a brilliant eighteenth-century version of a
Roman matron's portrait. Nonetheless, the sense of dignity
does not suppress the spirit of humor and intelligence that
radiates from Madame de Wailly's fully mature countenance.
This maturity is echoed in Pajou's handling of her body,
enhanced by the deliberately clinging cloth that half-confines
and half-exposes her breast and comfortable shoulders. The
sinuous and weighty curls that frame her face and cascade
heavily over her shoulders are no longer concocted of evanescent froth (as in Houdon's portraits), but are deliberately
and insistently sculptural, lending harmony and equilibrium
to the whole.
55

35 Comtesse de la Chtitre (Marie Charlotte Louise

Perrette Aglae Bontemps, 1762-1848)

Louise Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun

French,l755-1842
Oil on canvas; 45 x 34V2 in. (ll4.3 x 87.6 em.)
Gift of Jessie Woolworth Donahue, 1954 (54.182)

36 Self-Portrait with Two Pupils,

Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capel
(1761-1818) and Mademoiselle
Carreaux de Rosemond (d.1788), 1785

Adelaide Labille-Guiard
French,1749-1803
Oil on canvas; 83 x 59 1/2 in.
(210.8 x 15l.l em.)
Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953
(53.225.5)

LOUISE ELISABETH VIGEE LEBRUN

ADELAIDE LABILLE-GUIARD

Comtesse de la ChiUre

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

In her light-spirited, casually elegant, and delicately nuanced

portraits of aristocratic women of the late eighteenth century, no painter better captured the fleeting world of the
ancien regime than Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun. The daughter
of pastel portraitist Louis Vi gee and a student of, among others, Joseph Vernet, Vigee embarked at age fifteen on an
unremittingly successful career as a portrait painter that led
her in the course of her long life to the courts at Versailles,
Rome, Naples, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London for commissions of some six hundred portraits. Her talents as an
artist and her personal charm enabled Vigee to win the respect not only of her patrons but of fellow artists as well;
despite the low status of women painters during her day,
she was invited to join the academies of art in Paris, Rome,
Parma, and Bologna.
The comtesse was twenty-seven when she sat for this portrait in 1789. She had married Claude Louis, comte de la
Chatre, in 1778; later she divorced him and married Franc;ois
Annail, marquis and later comte de Jaucourt.

When this extraordinary triple portrait was shown in the

Salon of 1785, it was immediately recognized by sympathetic
minds to be a cogent plea for the improvel!lent of the status
of women artists in the Academy. One female reviewer wrote
that she overheard some viewers claim that the painting was
too vigorous and forceful to have been made by a woman,
"as if my sex were eternally condemned to mediocrity and
as if her works always had to carry the stamp of her weakness and ignorance."
When Adelaide Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Academy in 1783, the same year as Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun,
the number of female associates was limited to four. In this
portrait she surrounded herself with two of her own pupils,
Mademoiselle Capet and Mademoiselle Rosemond, and
dressed in full and extravagant costume to assert her class
and rank. Labille-Guiard limited herself almost exclusively
to portraiture for the rest of her career. She married her
instructor, Franc;ois Andre Vincent, after obtaining a separation from her first husband in 1780.

56

58

37 The Death of Socrates, 1787

Jacques Louis David
French, 1748-1825
Oil on canvas; 51 x 771/.t in.
(129.5 x 196.2 em.)
Wolfe Fund, Catharine Lorillard
Wolfe Collection, 1931 (31.45)
Page 60: text

59

JACQUES LOUIS DAVID

(Pages 58-59)

The Death of Socrates

At the approach of the French Revolution, when Greek and
Roman civic virtues were extolled as salutary antidotes to
the degeneracy of the old regime, David triumphed at the
Salon with a succession of works-The Oath of the Horatii
(1784) (Paris, Louvre), The Death of Socrates (1787), and the
Lictors Bringing Back to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons (1789)
(Paris, Louvre)-that gave clear expression to the moral and
philosophical directives of his time. Like the subject of the
three brothers Horatii, who bravely pledge their young lives
to the defense of their honor, family, and country, or that of
Brutus, whose sons have been sacrificed to the cause of liberty, David's tribute to Socrates' stringent social criticism and
stoical self-sacrifice was easily interpreted as a symbol of revolutionary ideology, dedication, and protest. In fact, the picture, which was first shown at the Salon of 1787, was shown
again during the Revolution, in the Salon of 1791. Four
years later, it was engraved at the government's expense.
David's Death of Socrates was based loosely on Plato's Phaedo
and on advice the artist had secured from the Greek scholar
Jean Adry. Socrates, charged by the Athenian government
with impiety and corrupting the young through his teachings,
was offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or being
sentenced to death for treason. Faithful to his convictions
and obedient to the law, Socrates chose to accept his sentence. David has portrayed him seated on his prison bed,
calmly reaching for the cup of poisonous hemlock while he
discourses on the immortality of the soul-a heroic gesture
reputedly suggested to David by the poet Andre Chenier.
In the interest of simplifying and unifying the composition,
David chose to reduce the number of disciples present from
the fifteen described by Plato to nine; they are shown in
various attitudes of horror, grief, and admiration: Crito,
seated on a stool, listens intently as he rests his hand on
Socrates' knee; Plato, represented as an old man, is poised
in deep meditation at the foot of the bed; and Apollodorus,
who was described as the most grief-stricken, is presumably
the figure at right, with both hands raised. The philosopher's
wife, Xanthippe, appears in the background, escorted by
the servants of Crito.

60

38 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94) and His Wife

(Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758-1836), 1788
Jacques Louis David
French,1748-1825
1
Oil on canvas; 102 /4 x 76% in. (259.7 x 194.6 em.)
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift,
1977 (1977.10)

jACQUES LOUIS DAVID

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife

A key work in the development of Neoclassical portraiture
and one of the milestones of Jacques Louis David's artistic
career, this lifesize double portrait of 1788 depicts the celebrated statesman and chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
and his wife, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze. Lavoisier, who
is perhaps best known for his pioneering studies of oxygen,
gunpowder, and the chemical composition of water, also
developed and codified a reformed system of chemical nomenclature. In 1789 his theories were published in the Traite
elementaire de chimie, a volume for which Madame Lavoisier,
who often assisted her husband and is said to have studied
under David, prepared the illustrations. While the talents
of Madame Lavoisier, here represented as a kind of muse
inspiring her husband, are evoked by the portfolio of drawings that rests on an armchair behind her, Lavoisier's chemical
experiments, including two relating to gunpowder and oxygen, are amply represented by the various scientific instruments on the table and floor. The manuscript from which
he is distracted may be that of the Traite, on which he is
known to have been working in 1788.
A man of diversified interests-from agriculture to weights
and measures-Lavoisier proved himself to be a capable,
albeit later unpopular, administrator. From 1769 he served
as a farmer-general, or tax collector (a position that ultimately led him to the guillotine), and from 1771 as general
director of the Administration of Gunpowder and Saltpeter. By 1787 he had already aroused public antipathy by the
wall he had erected around Paris to collect custom dues,
and in August 1789, as Commissioner of Gunpowder, he
became the principal target of rioting when he ordered the
transfer of some 10,000 pounds of low-grade gunpowder
from storage in the arsenal in Paris to Essones, to be replaced by a much higher-grade powder. His implication in
this scandal, just days before the Salon was to open, led to
the withdrawal of the present picture from public exhibition.

COIN CABINET

TAPESTRY WITH PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON

Originally part of a suite of furniture including a bed and a

pair of armchairs, this exceptional coin cabinet was commissioned by Dominique Vivant Denon, tastemaker extraordinaire during the Consulate and Empire periods. Its design
by Charles Percier was in fact inspired by a drawing by
Denon. He had participated in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1798-99, and his influential work of 1802, Le voyage dans Ia basse et Ia haute Egypte, contains an illustration of
the pylon at Ghoos on which the overall shape of the cabinet and the decoration of its frieze are based. The front
and back panels are inlaid with a scarab flanked by two uraei
on lotus stalks. These silver decorations, as well as the winged
disks on the frieze, were made by the noted silversmith Martin Guillaume Biennais. The interior is set with twenty-two
coin drawers, graduated in size. On each drawer a silver bee
is mounted with a hinged wing that serves as a pull. It is
thought that Jacob Desmalter, who as ebeniste de I'Empereur
supplied numerous fine pieces of Empire furniture to the
Bonaparte family, was also responsible for the execution of
this outstanding coin cabinet.

Napoleon's order of 1806 to have tapestry copies of two portraits of himself and one of Josephine woven at the Gobelins
manufactory was only completed in 1813. This tapestry-the
second piece woven-is after a copy by Franc;ois Gerard, or
one of his pupils, of his own painting.
The original portrait, which at the time belonged to Talleyrand, was based on Jean Baptiste Isabey's drawings of the
coronation for the collection of engravings called the Livre
du Sacre. The emperor, wearing the robes he wore for his
coronation at Notre Dame on December 2, 1804, is depicted
with his regalia.
All three tapestries were given as presents, this one to
Jean Jacques Regis de Cambaceres, due de Parme, prince
and arch-chancellor of the Empire. Each tapestry was lined,
mounted on a stretcher, put into a gilded frame, and provided with woolen curtains.
The ensemble of tapestry and frame work together, while
the decorative motifs used to embellish costume, furnishings,
and frame form a veritable lexicon of Napoleonic ornament.

39 Coi11 Cabi1ut, ca. 1805

Design by Charles Percier (French, 1764-1838)

after Dominique Vivant Denon (French, 1747-1825),
execution attributed to Fram;ois Honore Desmalter
(French, 1770-1841), with silver mounts by Martin
Guillaume Biennais (French, active ca. 1796-1819)
Mahogany with silver inl<iy and silver mounts;
35 1/2 X 19% X 14% in. (90.2 X 50.2 X 37.5 em.)
Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (26.168.77)

40 Portrait of Napoleon/, 1808- JJ

Designed by Fran~ois Gerard (1770-1837) in 1805;
woven in the haute-lisse workshop of Michel Henri
Cozeue (1744-1822) at the Gobelins manufactory by
Harland (prob. the Elder, act. 1790-ca. 1826), Abel
Nicolas Sollier (act. 1790-1815), Duruy the Younger
(prob. Charles Duruy, act. ca. 1805-1850), and five
other weavers Tapestry woven of wool, sil~, and silvergilt thread; H. 87 1/:~ (222 em.), W. 571/2 m. (146 em.)
Purchase, joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1943 (43.99)

62

41 General Etienne Maurice Gerard (1773-1852),

Marshal of France, 1816
Jacques Louis David
French,1748-1825
Oil on canvas; 77% x 53% in. (197.2 x 136.2 em.)
Purchase, Rogers and Fletcher Funds, Bequest of
Mary Wetmore Shively, in memory of her husband,
Henry L. Shively, M.D., by exchange, 1965 (65.14.5)

jACQUES LOUIS DAVID

General Etienne Maurice Gerard, Marshal of France

An active figure in the aesthetic as well as political aspects of
the French Revolution, Jacques Louis David, who had supported the execution of Louis XVI, was exiled to Belgium
when the monarchy was restored after Napoleon's defeat at
Waterloo in 1815. As a regicide, he spent the last nine years
of his life, from 1816 to 1825, in exile in Brussels, where he
continued to paint mythological subjects and portraits.
With this portrait of General Gerard, who was also banished from France in 1816, David initiated a series of monumental portraits that are striking in their clear, bright color
and sharp realism. Noble and restrained in composition,
betraying all the marks of an official commission in its ostentatious display of uniform and decorations, this portrait
nonetheless reveals David's ability to evoke, through stance
and visage, the character and psychology of the aging soldier.
Etienne Maurice, comte de Gerard, boasted a distinguished military career in the French army. He enlisted as a
volunteer in 1791 and rose to the rank of general de division
after the battle of Moscow, having masterminded a vital rearaction in the retreat from Russia. He was named count of
the Empire in 1813, awarded the Legion of Honor and the
Knighthood of Saint Louis in 1814, and named peer of
France by Napoleon during the Hundred Days.
64

PIERRE PAUL PRUD'HON

Andromache and Astyanax

Pierre Paul Prud'hon occupies an unusual position among
French artists at the end of the eighteenth century. Superficially, he might appear to be one of the primary Neoclassical
painters: His paintings are based on classical texts, the compositions reflect the design of antique reliefs, and his figural type is based on ancient prototypes. He was also an
ardent supporter of the Revolution and an active member
of David's leftist Club des Arts; under the direction of David,
the Neoclassical style had been invested with a political and
moral dimension. Yet Prud'hon's warm and sweet color harmonies have little to do with the cool tonality of David's
paintings, and his preference for sentimental subjects is almost the opposite of David's espousal of heroic themes. In
many ways, Prud'hon's work, rather than reflecting the stark
Neoclassicism of his day, looked more toward the less strident, domesticated art of the Romantic painters at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
This painting, begun in 1815-late in Prud'hon's career

66

-and left unfinished at his death, represents a scene from

Racine's play Andromaque. In it, the young boy Astyanax
rushes to the arms of his mother, Andromache, .who has
been taken by Pyrrhus as spoils from Troy. Pyrrhus is infatuated with Andromache, and seeks to win her love by protecting her son; Andromache, for her part, despises Pyrrhus
as the son of the man who killed Hector, her husband. Looking into the eyes of her son, Andromache sees his father:
"Hector," she'd cry, and clutched the boy again.
"Behold his eyes, his mouth, his brave young face;
'Tis he, 'tis you, dear husband, I embrace."

Prud'hon's subject may refer to the fate of the young king

of Rome and his mother, the empress Marie Louise, after
the fall of Napoleon: The emperor is reputed to have said
after his abdica~ion in 1814 that "the fate of Astyanax, prisoner of the Greeks, always seemed to me the saddest in history." Marie Louise commissioned this picture in 1814.

42 Andromache and Astyanax

Pierre Paul Prud'hon
French,1758-1823
Completed by Charles Boulanger de Boisfremont
(French,1773-1838)
Oil on canvas; 52 x 67VH in. (132.1 x 170.5 em.)
Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (25.110.14)

WovEN BoRDERS

Woven to size on one width, their pattern perpendicular to

the length of the fabric, these two borders were intended to
be cut and applied to other furnishings. They were made in
Lyons, a preeminent weaving center that had fallen on hard
times in the late eighteenth century but that was revitalized
by Napoleon I through his many orders for fabrics for the
refurbishing of the imperial palaces. Yards of these textiles
were still in storage, unused, when the emperor went into
exile in 1815. These borders were woven after the Bourbon
Restoration-whether for Louis XVIII or Charles X is not
certain-and the design is particularly fitting for the new
monarchy: It consists of two lengths of intertwined foliage,
called rinceaux-one of stylized leaves, the other of Bourbon
lilies-executed in two types of metal thread and placed
against a rich and regal blue satin ground.

43 Borders
French, 1815-30
Woven silk and metal threads;
41% in. x 2F/s in.
(105.2 x 55.6 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1940 (40.134.20)

67

44 Cruet Frame, ca. 1817

Jean Baptiste Claude Odiot
French,1763-1850
Silver; H. 15% x 12 in. (30.5 x 39.1 em.)
Gift of Audrey Love, in memory of
C. Ruxton Love, Jr., 1978 (1978.524.1)

THE DEMIDOFF VASE

SILVER CRUET FRAME

The restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815 did not

bring an end to the Empire style, as designers and craftsmen who worked for Napoleon continued many aspects of
that style under the patronage of Louis XVIII and his circle. The silversmith jean Baptiste Claude Odiot, head of the
family workshop from 1785 to 1827, survived the Revolution and the restoration of the monarchy, in each case by
joining the army.
This cruet frame, one of a pair, is part of a 119-piece
service produced by Odiot and billed to "M. de Demidoff,"
presumably Prince Nicholas Demidoff. The frames comprise ornamental friezes and three-dimensional elements cast
separately and assembled using nuts and bolts, a method
characteristic of Odiot's work. The focus of the composition
is the statuette of a nude woman whose legs are embraced
by a swan and whose encircling drapery serves as a handle.
The figure could be interpreted as Venus, the swan being
one of her attributes. The graceful swan had been the favorite motif of the empress Josephine, and was a regular
feature in Empire design. It has also been used in the ornamental frieze at the front of the frame.
68

Malachi~e, mined on lands belonging to the Demidoff family in Russia, became a favorite decorative material in the
nineteenth century. When polished, the tiny arcs in the green
stone interact to produce a superb field for ornament. For
works of considerable size, such as this monumental vase,
small, thin pieces of malachite were joined to make a sort of
veneer. To furnish his Florentine palazzo and to advertise his
family's wealth, Prince Nicholas Demidoff had several large
malachite objects, including this vase, fitted with mounts
by the leading French manufacturer of ornamental bronzes,
Thomire. In this setting, Thomire's chief contribution was
to keep the contrasts between stone and metal quite simple;
as demonstrated here, French Empire ideals of spareness
in design were to outlive the fall of the imperial regime for
some years. Because of this restraint, the "handles," compri5ing figures of Fame holding trumpets, stand out all the
more boldly.
The shape of this vase deliberately emulates those imposing, oversize marbles, the Borghese Vase (Paris, Louvre) and
the Medici Vase (Florence, Uffizi), that were among the most
admired furnishings to survive from classical antiquity. After
the sale of Demidoff property in 1880, its sheer impressiveness won the Demidoff Vase a natural place in one of New
York's grandest mansions, the Fifth Avenue house of William
Henry Vanderbilt.

45 DemidoffVase

French, 1819
Bronze mounts by Pierre Philippe Thomire
(French, 1753-1843)
Malachite and gilt bronze; H. (excl. pedestal)
67 1/2 in. (171.5 em.)
Purchase, Frederic R. Harris Gift, 1944 (44.152)

JEAN AuGUSTE DoMINIQUE lNG RES

jEAN AuGusTE DoMINIQUE INGRES

Three Studies of a Male Nude

Madame Lethiere and Her Daughter Letizia

J .A.D.

After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the French community

in Rome dispersed and Ingres lost many of his patrons. Experiencing financial hardship, he turned to making on commission highly finished portrait drawings in graphite pencil.
These drawn portraits became very popular, and a fascinating cross section of Ingres's world is preserved in more than
four hundred fifty drawings of artists, architects, musicians,
and members of society.
The sitters rendered here are Rosina Meli, the second
wife of Alexandre Guillon Lethiere, and their one-yearold daughter, Letizia. The sitter's father-in-law, Guillaume
Guillon Lethiere, had been a pupil of David's and in 1807
became the director of the French Academy in Rome, where
Ingres first knew him. Ingres made several portrait drawings of Lethiere and his family, including one of Rosina and
Letizia together with Alexandre. That portrait was executed
in the same year as the Metropolitan's drawing; it is now in
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ingres was David's most celebrated pupil. Awarded

the Prix de Rome in 1806, Ingres left Paris for Italy, where
he stayed until1824; ten years later he returned to Rome for
seven more years as director of the French Academy. Ingres's
classical style and his working procedure epitomized the
academic tradition, which he defended vehemently against
the French Romantic movement led by Delacroix.
The three depictions of a male nude on this sheet are
studies for the dead body of Acron in the painting Romulus
Victorious over Acron, King of the Caeninenses, Carries the Spolia Opima to the Temple ofjupiter. The picture was one of two
commissioned by the French military governor of Rome for
the Quirinale, then destined to be the Roman residence of
Napoleon I. The painting was finished in 1812 and hung in
the Quirinale until 1815. Napoleon never went to Rome,
and the painting was moved to the Lateran Palace. In 1867,
Pope Pius IX presented it to Napoleon II, and today it hangs
in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

46 Three Studies of a Male Nude

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

French, 1780-1867
Graphite; 7% x 14 'Y~t; in.
(19.7 x 36.4 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1919 (19 .125.2)

47 Madame Lethiere and Her Daughter Letizia,

ca. 1815
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
French,1780-1867
Graphite; ll 13/ I6 x 8% in. (30 x 22.2 em.)
Bequest of Grace Rainey Rogers, 1943 (43.85.7)

71

48 Joseph Antoine Moltedo (b.1775)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
French,l780-1867
Oil on canvas; 29% x 22 7/s in.
(75.3 x 58.1 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer,
1929, H.O. Havemeyer Collection
(29.100.23)

49 Pauline Eleonore de Galard de Brassac de Bcarn

(1825-60), Princesse de Broglie, 1853

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

French,1780-1867
Oil on canvas; 47% x 35% in. (121.3 x 90.8 em.)
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.186)

jEAN AuGUSTE DoMINIQUE INGRES

jEAN AuGuSTE DoMINIQUE INGRES

Joseph Antoine M oltedo

The Princesse de Broglie

Hostile critics referred to Ingres's early works as having an

"archaic" or Gothic character, meaning that his paintings exhibited qualities reminiscent of fifteenth- or early sixteenthcentury painting. In its unrelenting realism, exaggerated
mathematical perspective, and rigorous local color, the portrait of Moltedo, a modern equivalent of a Holbein portrait,
exemplifies Ingres's gothic or primitivizing early style. It
belongs to a series of portraits of French officials in Napoleonic Rome painted between 1810 and 1814. These are distinguished by the inclusion of Roman views as backdrops
for the sitters, as well as by stormy gray skies-a Romantic
conceit that serves as a foil to the calm and secure expressions of the men portrayed.
Until the mid-1950s, this painting was known only as a
portrait of a gentleman. Once it was discovered that the
picture had been in the collection of the Moltedo family for
most of the nineteenth century, the sitter was identified as
Joseph Antoine Moltedo, a Corsican who served as director
of the Roman post office from 1803 to 1814. An inventor of
sorts, Moltedo designed a fire pump and a hemp-weaving
machine, and ran a lead foundry at Tivoli.

Ingres's portrait of the princesse de Broglie is his last commissioned portrait. Although the artist had supported himself almost exclusively on portraits as a young man, he
hoped, once he returned to Paris in 1841 amid great acclaim, that he could renounce them: "Damn portraits," he
complained in 184 7, "they are so difficult to do that they
prevent me from getting on with greater things that I could
do more quickly." Nevertheless, he succumbed to pressure
reluctantly between 1845 and 1853 and accepted commissions for five paintings-from the comtesse d'Haussonville,
the baroness James de Rothschild, the princesse de Broglie,
and two from his idol of beauty, Madame Moitessier-that
together constitute the greatest achievements of his maturity.
In each of these portraits, the sitter is dressed for a ball
and shown in her own house, either pausing before going
out or engaged in conversation. And in each, the rich furnishings of the environments the women inhabit and the
luxurious stuff of their clothes are brilliantly played against
the absolute silence of the scene and the complete serenity
of the sitters. The princesse de Broglie was twenty-eight
when Ingres completed her portrait in 1853.

72

51 Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga

(b.l784)

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Spanish, 1746-1828
Oil on canvas; 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 em.)
The jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.41)

50 Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1795

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Spanish, 1746-1828
Point of brush and gray wash;
6 x 3!)116 in. (15.3 x 9.1 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935
(35.103.1)

FRANCISCO DE GoYA Y LUCIENTES

Portrait of the Artist

Goya rendered this self-portrait around 1795, when he was
forty-nine years old. The artist's intense stare suggests that
the portrait is a mirror image. In the words of the Goya
scholar Pierre Gassier, "This ~s the finest and most tragic of
all the known self-portraits. Made a few years after the illness of 1792, which had left him deaf, it has a strange resemblance to his contemporary, Beethoven." After Goya's
death, the drawing became the frontispiece to an album of
fifty of his drawings, selected from different periods by his
son and grandson, who; in financial need, sold the album
to the Spanish painter Valentin Carderera. The Metropolitan Museum purchased the famous album in Paris in 1935.
It is the largest single group of Goya drawings outside the
Prado, Madrid.

74

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga

In the early 1780s, Goya was asked to paint six official portraits for the Bank of San Carlos (now the Bank of Spain).
The sitters included such influential personages as Charles
III of Spain, the conde de Altamira, and the conde de Cabarrus, founder of the bank. Indeed, this commission would
prove to be a turning point in Goya's career, for not only
did it occasion his first portrait of Charles III (later, in 1786,
he was appointed Painter to the King), but also it was to
bring- him the patronage of the noble Altamira fa.mily. Goya
painted another three portraits of the Alt~mira family over
the next few years, including this picture of the conde de
Altamira's youngest son, don Manuel.
Although this painting at first appears to be a conventional portrait of a child, on closer scrutiny it is seen to be a
rather sinister and unsettling work. Don Manuel, depicted
in luxurious costume, holds a magpie on a string, who in
turn holds Goya's calling card in his beak. In the background
three cats stare menacingly at the bird, ready to pounce.
From the earliest days of Christian art, birds have been used
to symbolize the soul, and in much Baroque painting, caged
birds represent childhood. But rarely are birds so convincingly threatened as here: It would appear that Goya is illustrating the frail boundaries that separate a child's world from
the ever-present forces of evil.

FRANCisco DE GoYA Y LuciENTES

He Wakes Up Kicking
Goya painted directly onto canvas without relying upon preparatory sketches. Yet he has come to be regarded as one of
the greatest graphic artists of all time. At his death, Goya
left more than one thousand drawings and nearly three hundred etchings and lithographs, representing his most innovative, personal, and disturbing work. From 1796 onward,
Goya filled eight albums with drawings to amuse himself
and his friends. They are commentaries on human existence-often satirical-ranging from the pleasures and folly

Up Kicking, ca. 1801-03

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Spanish, 1746-1828
Point of brush and gray wash,
heightened with blackchalk;
inscribed by the artist in black
chalk below figure, Dispierta dando
patadas [He Wakes Up Kicking],
9Yit> x 5:Y-t in. (23.6 x 14.6 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935
52 He Wakes

:/6.

(35.103.26)

of love to the anguish of human misery. The captions written

casually above or below the drawings are Goya's own, added
to explain the subject or to bemuse the spectator. This pathetic little figure is shown struggling with his anxieties as if
in an existential vacuum. The drawing belongs to Goya's
smallest album, dated 1801-03, of which only seventeen
drawings are known. It is also one of the fifty sheets purchased by the Metropolitan in 1935.

76

fRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

The Giant
Goya was a fashionable and successful painter ot royal portraits and tapestry cartoons when in 1799, at the age of fiftythree, several years after suffering a nearly fatal illness that
left him deaf, he published a set of eighty satirical etchings
called Los Caprichos, now the best known of his prints. Goya
went on to produce three other sets of etchings, the Disasters
of War, the Bullfights, and the Follies, or Proverbs, and at the
age of eighty, in Bordeaux, he took up the brand new medium of lithography and created some of the greatest works
ever done in that medium. The nearly three hundred prints,
even without his magnificent painted oeuvre, would place
Goya among the major artists of his era.
The Giant stands alone among Goya's prints in several ways.
He was technically innovative in both etching and lithography, and in this print he created the image by covering
the plate with an allover tone of aquatint and then using a

burnisher to scrape out the design. The method is thus similar to mezzotint-a technique brought to great heights in
England in the eighteenth century-but the effect is stronger
and freer. The plate was accidentally destroyed, and only
six impressions of it are known, this and one other in the
first state, and four others showing more burnishing to
change the outline of the forearm and make more explicit
the tiny villages on the plain.
The print is not part of any series, although it was done
during the period of the Disasters of War, that is, between
1810 and 1820, while Spain was devastated first by the armies of Napoleon and then by famine and civil disorder.
The image is similar to the painting called The Colossus, or
Panic, now in the Prado, Madrid, made by 1812. In both
works the colossal figure stands for the immense powers
governing human destiny, over which we have no control.

53 The Giant, 1818

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Spanish, 1746-1828
Aquatint with burnishing;
l1 1/2 x 81/-1 in. (29.5 x 20.9 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935
(35.42)

77

54 The Bullfight

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Spanish, 1746-1828
Oil on canvas; 38% x 49% in. (98.4 x 126.3)
Wolfe Fund, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe
Collection, 1922 (22.181)
Opposite: detail

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

The Bullfight
Bullfighting is a subject intimately associated with the art of
Goya, where it is perhaps best expressed in his series of
etchings, the Tauromaquia. These thirty-three plates, worked
by Goya in the course of 1815, were published the following
year and constitute one of the few series of prints publicly
sold by the artist during his life. They depict actual events
that occurred in the Plaza de Madrid: dramatic scenes of
heroism by brave toreadors as well as gruesome gorings of
innocent bystanders. IH their ennobling of everyday occurrences, the prints were sure to find a popular audience; but
in publishing them, Goya traversed the opinion of many of
Madrid's aristocrats that bullfighting was a base sport, appealing to the worst instincts of an uneducated mind. That
Goya willingly proclaimed his identification with the ancient
Spanish ritual is testimony not only to his particular love of
bullfights but also to his identification with the proletariat
and their pursuits.

78

This painting, well known and much discussed since the

end of the nineteenth century, is somewhat anomalous in
style and technique to the rest of Goya's oeuvre, and thus it
has sometimes been regarded skeptically by authorities in
the field. Some writers believe that it was included, although
not named, in an 1812 inventory of Goya's studio; others
believe that it figured in an 1828 inventory taken after his
death. Almost certainly it was executed in the years before
the publication of the Tauromaquia, and it shares with the
prints a remarkable specificity and feeling of actuality. Yet
the divided bullring has never been identified with certainty,
and no known toreador's name has been associated with those
depicted here. Nonetheless, the remarkable calligraphy of
Goya's brush, seen in the jotted crowd of observers, and
his brilliant inclusion of bright color within an otherwise
restricted palette, can be found in a number of genre pictures
executed during the Spanish War of Independence.

79

80

55 Majas on a Balcony

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Spanish, 1746-1828
Oil on canvas; 76% x 49lf2 in.
(194.8 x 125.7 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.10)

56 Don Tiburcio Perez y Cuervo, the Architect, 1820

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Spanish, 1746-1828
Oil on canvas; 40 1/-t x 32 in. (102.1 x 81.3 em.)
Theodore M. Davis Collection, 1915,
Bequest of Theodore M. Davis (30.95.242)

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

Don Tiburcio Perez y Cuervo, the Architect

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

Majas on a Balcony
This painting is one of a group of genre subjects that Goya
painted during or shortly after the Spanish War of Independence (1808-14), when he received no commissions from
the court. Here, he depicts majos and majas, male and female
members of the Spanish working class who were easily recognized by their striking attire and flamboyant behavior.
The enthusiasm for majismo was such that Goya's patrons
sometimes chose to pose in the guis~ of these dashing young
Spaniards.
During the middle and second half of the nineteenth century there was a marked interest in Spanish paintings, especially those of Goya. Edouard Manet based the composition
of his 1868 painting The Balcony (Paris, Musee d'Orsay) on
Majas on a Balcony. However, it is not known which of the four
versions of the painting he had seen.

On February 27, 1819, Goya acquired a country property

of about twenty-five acres on the right bank of the river
Manzanares, just outside Madrid. He moved to the property, called the "Quinta del Sordo," with Leocadia Weiss and
her daughter, Rosarito, and remained there until he left for
Bordeaux in June 1824. Not only was Spain sinking into
political and economic chaos at the time, but closer to home,
the Inquisition had reopened its files on Goya; thus the
Quinta was a double form of escape that enabled him to
work in peace and quiet. Goya spent this period mainly on
graphic works, a few ecclesiastic commissions, and murals
to decorate the Quinta: fourteen works known as "the black
paintings," now in the Prado, Madrid. He also executed a
few portraits, although, unlike earlier in his career, these
were confined to pictures of his friends, one of them, Don
Tiburcio Perez y Cuervo.
Don Tiburcio, an architect, is known to have been quarrelsome and to have enjoyed a reputation as a bullfighter, an
interest he shared with the artist. Goya's depiction of him in
an almost defiantly casual pose stands in direct opposition
to the formality of the artist's earlier portrait commissions.
The result is one of the most engaging of Goya's male portraits.
81

ENGLISH COIN CABINET

The cabinetmakers William Vile and John Cobb, partners

since 1750, were appointed "joint Upholsterers to his Majesty's Great Wardrobe" in 1761. In that same year, Vile submitted a bill for alteration work on George III's medal
cabinet, work that had been supplied-probably by Vile-in
1758. The cabinet illustrated here, which may have had an
open stand, is likely to have been an end section of that
medal cabinet. The other, almost identical end-cabinet is in
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the whereabouts of the middle section are not known. Comprising
three stages, the cabinet is richly decorated with superbly
carved and applied ornament. The front of the pedimented
top section is carved with the star of the Order of the Garter, set within acanthus foliage. Enclosed behind doors are
135 shallow drawers, intended to. hold the king's extensive
collection of medals.

Louis FRAN<;OIS RouBILIAC

The Sense of Sight

Louis Fraw;ois Roubiliac, a refugee Huguenot sculptor from
France, arrived in England in the 1730s and immediately
entered the supportive circle of other French Huguenots
active in London. Although he based this porcelain figure
on his terra-cotta of Ganymede, he has added a painted
rainbow and a peacock feather around the eagle's neck so
as to make the figure represent Sight, for a series of statuettes embodying the five senses. There is very little here of
the conflicting and syncopated rhythms of the Rococo style
that accounted for so much early porcelain art. Rather, the
sculptural rhythms ofRoubiliac's work are marked by broad
diagonals, a characteristic of Baroque art.

57 Coin Cabinet, 1758-1761

Attrib. to William Vile
English, 1700-1767
Mahogany; 79 x 27 x 17 1/4 in.
(200.7 x 68.6 x 43.8 em.)
Fletcher Fund, 1964 (64.79)

58 The Sense of Sight

London (Chelsea), ca. 17 55

Modeled prob. by Louis Franc;:ois Roubiliac
(b. France, act. England, 1702/ 5-1762)
Soft-paste porcelain from a set of five;
H. 11 VH in. (28.3 em.) Bequest of
John L. Cadwalader, 1914 (14.58.117)

OVERLEAF:

ENGLISH TAPESTRY

RooM

(Pages 84-85)

Even before his accession to the title in 1751, George William, sixth earl of Coventry, had begun to reconstruct his
house and gardens at Croome Court in Worcestershire. In
1760 Robert Adam replaced Capability Brown as the earl's
architect and interior decorator, and under Adam's direction the refined, elegant tapestry room was executed. Most
of the elements in the room today, such as the oak floor,
mahogany doors, and carved paneling by the carpenter John
Hobcraft and the carver Sefferin Aiken, are authentic. The
decorative chimneypiece displays two kinds of marble as well
as a lapis-lazuli tablet. The master plasterer Joseph Rose,
who worked for Adam on a number of occasions, was responsible for the ceiling with its ornamented wheel molding, center rosette, and garlanded trophies. It is known that
a number of leading London cabinetmakers and upholsterers supplied the furnishings for this room. The marquetry
commode was purchased from Peter Langlois, a French cab-

inetmaker, in 1764, and the firm of Ince and Mayhew provided the set of carved and gilded seating, the pierglass,
and the curtain cornices. Specially ordered in 1763, the crimson tapestries on the walls and seating are the chief glory of
the room. They were woven in the workshop of Jacques
Neilson at the Gobelins manufactory in Paris. The oval medallions, depicting mythological scenes symbolizing the elements, are based on designs by Fran<;ois Boucher. Upon its
completion in 1771, this tapestry room must undoubtedly
have been one of the grandest and most harmonious of all
early Neoclassical interiors.

59 Tapestry Room from Groome Court, Worcestershire

English, 1760-71
Wood, plaster, tapestry, and marble; 13 ft. 10% in. x
27ft. 1 in. x 22ft. 8 in. (4.23 m. x 8.27 m. x 6.9 m.)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1958 (58.75.la)

83

60 Dining Room from

Lansdowne House, London
English, 1765-68
Wood, plaster, and marble;
17 ft. 11 in. x 4 7 ft. x 24 ft. 6 in.
(5.46 m. x 14.31 m. x 7.47 m.)
Rogers Fund, 1931 (32.12)

DINING RooM FROM THE LANSDOWNE HousE

In 1765 William Petty Fitzmaurice, second earl of Shelburne

and the future marquis of Lansdowne, acquired a palatial
residence on London's Berkeley Square. The mansion, built
after designs of the Scottish architect Robert Adam, was only
partially completed at the time. It was for Lord Shelburne
that Adam designed this dining room, one of his most successful and sophisticated interiors. Preserved drawings and
engravings for both the elevation of the walls and the complex geometrical ceiling show that the room was executed
almost precisely as planned. The oak floor, the shutters, and
the frames of doors and windows, carved by the sculptor
John Gilbert, are original to the room, as is the marble
chimneypiece, which has been attributed to Thomas Carter.
The decorative columnar screen, creating a spatial effect of
remarkable grandeur, is a feature recurring in several of
Robert Adam's interiors. The glorious white plaster decorations of griffins, putti, Vitruvian scrolls, leaf garlands,
and trophies, carried out by Joseph Rose, illustrate Adam's
love for classical ornament. Plaster casts have replaced the
antique statues from Lord Shelburne's collection that stood
in the niches along the walls. Furniture from other sources
complements this most splendidly proportioned room with
its pleasing color scheme.
86

ROBERT jONES

Hunting and Fishing Scenes

61 Hunting and Fishing Scenes

Robert Jones
English, act. 1761-80
Cotton and linen, copperplate
and block printed with penciling;
81 1/H x 39 in. (206.1 x 99 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1983 (1983.365)

In 1752 Francis Nixon of Drumcondra, Ireland, discovered

the process of colorfast copperplate printing on textiles. This
technique utilized only one color but allowed larger and
more detailed compositions, rendered with finer modeling,
than could be achieved with traditional woodblock printing.
The subjects and scenes used to decorate furnishing fabrics
produced by this new method often parallel closely those
found in contemporary paintings and prints. This is particularly evident in Hunting and Fishing Scenes, which depicts
fashionably attired ladies and gentlemen pursuing the sporting pastimes of the gentry amid romantic ruins and landscape.
The inscription tells us that this was printed in 1769 by
Robert Jones and Co. at Old Ford, a manufactory that Jones
had founded at least eight years earlier in the East End of
London. The painterly quality of th~ designs was achieved
by combining different printing methods. First, the principal elements of the composition were copperplate printed
-one plate for each of the two major scenes-in aubergine. Additional colors were then added by woodblock
printing-a process involving great skill and time to ensure
that all impressions register properly. Finally, blue was added
by penciling.

GEORGE STUBBS

A Favorite Hunter ofJohn Frederick Sackville,

Later Third Duke of Dorset
George Stubbs was one of the rare artists of the eighteenth
century who developed an important oeuvre with virtually
no formal training. He became famous in his day as a painter
of "sporting pictures," but he could render human physiognomy or a picturesque landscape with the same sensitivity
and precision that he brought to his beloved horses. Stubbs
was the son of a currier and leather seller, and although he
began drawing at an early age, his experience in his father's
shop seemed to have inculcated the passion for horses, for
equestrian anatomy and movement, that gave birth to the
series of investigations that led to the central achievement
of the artist's life: the publication in 1766 of his engraved
Anatomy of the Horse. It was this treatise, still useful today,
that secured Stubbs's reputation and ensured sufficient commissions to support a comfortable life.
This canvas, probably commissioned by John Sackville,
was executed at the height of Stubbs's career: a moment when
his landscapes reached a pre-Romantic poetry and his painting of figures was confident and persuasive. As always, the
portrait of the bay hunter is superbly executed. The small
inconsistencies of lighting and shadow betray Stubbs's usual
practice of painting the horse first on a neutral background,
and afterward painstakingly filling in the landscape between
the legs.

88

62 A Ftmorite Hunter ojjohn Frederick Sackvillt',

later Third Dukt' ofDrmet, 176H

George Stubbs
British, 1724-IH06
Oil on canvas; 40 x 49:Y, in. (101.6 x 126.4 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. Paul Moore, 19HO (19H0.46H)

OVERLEAF:

SIR jOSHUA REYNOLDS

(Pages 90-91)

The Honorable Henry Fane with His Guardians,

Inigo jones and Charles Blair
Sir Joshua Reynolds, the most sought-after portrait painter
of his day, has until recently been better remembered for
his accomplishments as a theorist on art and as founding
president of the Royal Academy than for the portraits in
the grand manner on which his. artistic reputation rests.
Apprenticed as a youth to the portraitist Thomas Hudson,
he learned painting as a craft rather than an art, yet owing
to the sophistication of his subsequent learning and the
analytical power of his mind, he overcame his initial difficulty
with drawing. With the institution of the Royal Academy, he
almost singlehandedly raised the status of artists in England,
and it was he who revived the standing of the portrait to

that of great art, as Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens
had done before him.
This group portrait of the Honorable Henry Fane, the
future tenth earl of Westmoreland, and his two trustees was
executed in 1766-two years before Reynolds became president of the Royal Academy. He was at an early stage in his
career, but his talents were at their highest: His skills of
persuasive characterization, evident in this picture, were in
full force, and he had not yet adopted the self-consciously
Neoclassical style that rarely flattered his sitters. Rather, the
perquisites and personalities of the English nobility are here
rather imposingly displayed.
89

90

63 The Honorable Henry Fane

(1739-1802) with His Guardians,
Inigo jones and Charles Blair, 1766
Sir Joshua Reynolds
British, 1723-92
Oil on canvas; 100lf4 x 142 in.
(254.6 x 360.7 em.)
Gift ofJunius S. Morgan, 1887
(87.16)
Par;e 89: text

91

64 Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott,

(1754?-1823)

Thomas Gainsborough
British, 1727-88
Oil on canvas; 92 1/4 x 60V2 in.
(230.6 x 151.2 em.) Bequest of
William K. Vanderbilt, 1920
(20.155.1)
Page 94: text

65 Colonel George K. H. Coussmaker

(1759-1801), Grenadier Guards,

Sir Joshua Reynolds

British, 1723-92
Oil on canvas; 93% x 57V4 in.
(238.1 x 145.4 em.) Bequest of
William K. Vanderbilt, 1920
(20.155.3)
Page 94: text

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

66 The Wood Gatherers

Thomas Gainsborough
British, 1727-88
Oil on canvas; 58 1/M x 47% in.
(147.6 x 120.3 em.) Bequest of
Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950
(50.145.17)

(Page 92)

Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott

By the time Thomas Gainsborough moved to London from
the provinces in 1774, he had evolved his portrait style from
the small-scale, French-influenced, conversation pieces of
his days in Ipswich and Bath to the commanding lifesize
portraits in the grand manner that brought him fame. The
first of many royal commissions came in 1777, and from
this time on his position, with Reynolds, as one of the leading painters of his day was assured.
The daughter of an Edinburgh lawyer, Grace Dalrymple
married the elderly Dr. Elliott at age seventeen, the first
step in a remarkable amorous career. Three years later she
eloped to Paris with Lord Valentia but returned to England
as the mistress of the marquess of Cholmondeley, who commissioned the present painting. Gainsborough exhibited the
portrait at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1778, and the
sitter's history did not escape notice. One newspaper commented that the artist's subjects "consist chiefly offilles de joie,
and are all admirable likenesses, no. 114 particularly, being
that of the beautiful Mrs. E." The prince of Wales subsequently saw the portrait at Cholmondeley's country house,
Houghton, and asked to meet Mrs. Elliott; later, the prince
claimed paternity of her child. Mrs. Elliott was introduced
by the prince to Philippe Egalite, duke of Orleans, with
whom she moved back to Paris in 1786, living there through
the Revolution. She died in 1823.

SIR jOSHUA REYNOLDS

(Page 93)

Colonel George K. H. Coussmaker, Grenadier Guards

One of the masterpieces of Sir Joshua Reynolds's late career, this portrait of 1782-83 required some sixteen sittings
of Colonel Coussmaker, and several more for the horse.
While the artist no doubt enjoyed in his composition a reference to van Dyck's portrait of Charles I in hunting costume (Paris, Louvre), the subject's ease of pose and casual
regard are Reynolds's own. Nevertheless, the brighter tonality of this late work and the more sensuous application
of paint may be his response to the rising popularity of
Thomas Gainsborough's painting.

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

The Wood Gatherers

This work is one of some twenty "Fancy Pictures" executed
by Thomas Gainsborough in his last eight years of his life.
Based on similar subjects by Murillo-Gainsborough's favorite painter after van Dyck-these genre scenes were
widely admired by the artist's contemporaries. Reynolds
called one, Girl with Pigs, "the best picture he ever painted,
or perhaps ever will." The Wood Gatherers is among the latest
and most confidently painted of the series, notable for the
romantic landscape lit by the last rays of sun, and the masterful grouping of figures.

94

95

67 Bust (ifLaurence Sterne, ca. 1765-66

Joseph Nollekens
English, 1737-1823
Marble; H. (incl. socle) 21:Y, in. (55.2 em.)
Purchase .John T. Dorrance, .Jr. Gift,
in memory of Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll,
1979 (1979.275.2)

68 Vauxhall Gardens, 1785

Design by Thomas Rowlandson (British, 1757-1827),
etching by Robert Pollard (British, 1755-1838),
aquatint by Frances Jukes[?] (British, 1747-1812)
Etching and aquatint; 20% x 29 7/R in. (53 x 75.9 em.)
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey
Fund, 1959 (59.533.975)

JosEPH NoLLEKENS

Bust of Laurence Sterne

The Neoclassical portrait bust, crisply white and bare of
shoulder, became an essential property in the English home.
Joseph Nollekens was one of the most prolific suppliers
of such busts. This portrait of Sterne has a pendant bust
of Alexander Pope. It was with this work, however, that Nollekens first attracted attention; his biographer, J. T. Smith,
noted astringently that "with this performance, Nollekens
continued to be pleased even unto his second childhood."
Nollekens modeled the bust in 1765-66 in Rome, where
the greatly lionized author of Tristram Shandy was traveling
for the sake of his health. A certain ironic play in the set of
the mouth perhaps denotes the humorist, but overall a stoic
look dominates, obtained from the sculptor's study of Roman
Republican portraiture.

96

THOMAS RowLANDSON

Vauxhall Gardens
Thomas Rowlandson's prints number over three thousandit was said that the amount of copper he etched would
sheathe the British Navy. Vauxhall Gardens, his best-known
work and one of his largest, drawn in 1784 and published as
a print a year later, demonstrates his appeal. Human ugliness and variety are exposed, but with sympathy and charm.
A well-informed contemporary could have identified many
of the foreground figures. Near the right, the Prince of
Wales (future George IV) speaks into the ear of his beloved

Perdita Robinson, whose much older husband, on the other

side, seems to be trying to pull her away; the two young
women in the center are the duchess of Devonshire and her
sister, Lady Duncannon; and tradition has it that the group
dining at a table at the far left are Samuel Johnson with
Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, and Oliver Goldsmith. The scene was
intended as a typical, not a specific, scene at Vauxhall, where
concerts in the "orchestra" decorated in Gothic style attracted
the fashionable and their followers.

SAMUEL PERCY

Portrait of Count Joseph Boruwlaski

Among the minor arts, wax portrait miniatures developed
into a quintessentially English art form. On all counts the
most gifted practitioner, however, was an Irishman, Samuel
Percy, deft modeler of complex genre scenes in addition to
the usual run of lordly statesmen and busty beauties that
were the bread and butter of the trade. In this case Percy
shows wit to match that of his sitter, the Polish-born dwarf
Joseph Boruwlaski, celebrated in his day for a life of international adventure and for his conversational powers.
Boruwlaski, who was unusually well proportioned for a
dwarf, was to live to the age of ninety-eight. Percy depicts
him at forty-eight, alert and keen of eye and shown as if
seated in a theater box (suggested by the green swag of curtain). His small stature is emphasized by his placement
toward the bottom of the composition with lots of surroundmg space.

69 Portrait of Count joseph Boruwlaski, 1798

Samuel Percy
Irish, 1750-1820
Colored wax on glass; 7:y, in. x 6:Y-; in.
(18.7 em. x 162 em.)
The Glenn Tilley Morse Collection,
Bequest of Glenn Tilley Morse, 1950 (50.187.30)

GEORGE RoMNEY

Self-Portrait
After Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough,
George Romney was the most popular portrait painter in
England during the reign of George III. He began by painting portraits in the provinces, after serving his apprenticeship to an itinerant painter named Christopher Steele. But
Romney's style did not coalesce until he moved to London
in 1762. There he developed the free-flowing and at times
bold manner that informs his best work. When Romney was
uninspired, his portraits often had a routine air; when he
was given a beautiful young woman, a dashing officer, or a
pink-cheeked child, however, he could invest their portraits
with an ease and vigor that is rarely found in the work of
his better-known contemporaries.
Romney painted self-portraits only infrequently; this introspective work was done fairly late in the artist's career.
His son, the Reverend John Romney, described it in his
memoirs of his father's life:
In the winter of 1795 he painted a head of himself, which,
though slight, and not entirely finished, being painted at once,
shows uncommon power of execution; the likeness also, is
strong, but there is a certain expression of languor that indicates the approach of disease .... It is remarkable that it is
painted without spectacles, though he had been in the habit
of using glasses for many years.

98

70 Sel{Portrait, 1795
George Romney
British, 1734-1802
Oil on canvas; 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 em.)
Bequest of Maria DeWitt Jesup, from the
collection of her husband, Morris K. Jesup,
1914 (15.30.37)

99

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby

Sir Thomas Lawrence, like Mozart, was a child prodigy. And
like Mozart's father, Lawrence's subordinated all family priorities to the promotion of his son's talents as a draftsman
and portraitist. By the time Thomas was eleven, his family
had established him at Bath, where he drew portraits in
pastel of local nobles and visiting dignitaries. In 1787 he
submitted his first portraits in oil to exhibitions in London,
to uncertain reviews. But when, at the age of twenty-one,
he exhibited this portrait of Elizabeth Farren at the Royal
Academy, it received instant and unanimous acclaim. To an
audience accustomed to the stiff Neoclassicism and awkward
drawing of Reynolds, the naturalism of Lawrence's portrait
-its subject caught seemingly unawares, depicted with brilliant fluency and vibrant brushwork-appeared to create a
new vocabulary of style almost overnight. Reynolds himself,
always a better critic than artist, was one of the first to acknowledge Lawrence's gifts and paid him the compliment
of saying, "In you, sir, the world will expect to see accomplished all that I have failed to achieve."
Most critics remarked on Lawrence's skill in rendering
the fine fur, satin, and silky gauze of the gown. But the
veracity of the likeness was noticed as well: One critic wrote,
"We have seen a great variety of pictures of Mrs. Farren,
but we never before saw her mind and character on canvas.
It is completely Elizabeth Farren: arch, spirited, elegant and
engaging."
The daughter of a surgeon at York, Elizabeth Farren was
trained as an actress with a company of itinerant players
and made her debut in London as Kate Hardcastle in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. In 1790, when this portrait was
painted, she stood at the height of her professional career.
The protegee of the earl of Derby, she married him on the
death of his first wife in 1797.
100

71 Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby

(b. ca. 1759-d. 1829)

Sir Thomas Lawrence

British, 1769-1830
Oil on canvas; 94 x 57'12 in. (238.8 x 146.1 em.)
Bequest of EdwardS. Harkness, 1940 (50.135.5)

72 The Calmady Children

(Emily, 1818-1906,
and Laura Anne, 1820-94)
Sir Thomas Lawrence
British, 1769-1830
Oil on canvas; 30 7/s x 30'/s in.
(78.4 x 76.5 em.) Bequest of
Collis P. Huntington, 1900
(25.110.1)

73 The Drummond Children

Sir Henry Raeburn
British, 1756-1823
Oil on canvas; 94 1/4 x 60 1/4 in.
(239.4 x 153 em.) Bequest of
Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950
(50.145.31)

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

SIR HENRY RAEBURN

The Calmady Children

The Drummond Children

Charles B. Calmady of Langdon Court, Devonshire, was introduced to Sir Thomas Lawrence by a common friend, the
engraver F. C. Lewis, in 1823; evidently the painter was captivated by the charm of Calmady's eldest children, Emily
and Laura Anne, and quickly executed a spirited chalk drawing of them. The finished painting was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1824, where its success was as sensational as
that which had greeted Lawrence's portrait of Elizabeth
Farren thirty-four years before. The Literary Gazette published a notice in which it was called "a focus of talent. ...
Powerful and glittering as it is in execution, the playful and
beautiful sentiment that shines through all is its greatest
charm."
Lawrence declared that this was his "best picture." "I have
no hesitation in saying so-my best picture of the kind, quite
-one of the few I should wish hereafter to be known by."
The artist had the painting sent up to Windsor Castle for
the king to see and took it with him to Paris; but it remained
with the Calmady family until the last years of the nineteenth century.

Sir Henry Raeburn, working in Edinburgh, supplied portraits to the leading families of Scotland. In contrast to his
contemporary Sir Joshua Reynolds, Raeburn developed a
style that depended on thickly applied paint used w create
rather abrupt transitions in the modeling of forms, with
strong highlights as opposed to careful gradations. In The
Drummond Children, however, Raeburn created an atmospheric effect through delicate shading and a limited palette. The picture's handsome composition and immediacy
of expression combine to make it one of Raeburn's best
group portraits.
The children depicted are George Drummond, at left,
Margaret Drummond, at right, and a foster brother, in the
center. Their father, George Harley Drummond, was portrayed by Raeburn in a pendant of the same size, also in the
collection of this museum.

102

WILLIAM BLAKE

Two Pages from Songs of Innocence

William Blake is the only artist of his rank who is even better known as a poet, and some of his most pleasing works
are those he called "illuminated printing," which fuse picture and word, resulting in a completely integrated and
completely personal product. Songs of Innocence was first published in 1789, and comprised thirty-one illuminated poems ;
in 1794 it was republished along with Songs of Experience,
with fifty-four plates in all. Blake used the unusual technique of relief etching, which he claimed was dictated to
him by his dead brother in a dream, but the idea of which
had been discussed among his acquaintances. In this technique, the background, rather than the lines that create the
design, is etched away, leaving the image to be printedboth words and illustration-standing in relief on the plate.
Blake's books are thus similar to some of the earliest illus-

74 Title page frorn Songs of Innocence, 1789

William Blake
British, 1757-1827
Reli_ef etching, hand-painted with watercolor
and gold; sheet 6 x 5 1/~ in . (15.2 x 14 em .)
Rogers Fund , 1917 (17.10.3)

104

trated books, the fifteenth-century blockbooks, so called because for each page the background was cut away from the
wooden block, leaving the letters and images to stand in
relief. Blake printed his plates in one color only; here it is a
bright red-brown, but other copies were done in other colors. The pages were then painted-it is not known by whom
in this case, though Blake did color many copies himself-in
watercolors and gold. Thus every copy of the book is unique.
The colors and the gold are especially brilliant in this copy,
which is further distinguished by an ornamental border of
tracery in green ink. Blake kept the plates and produced
these books over a long period of time, probably as there
was demand for them. The watermark on twelve leaves of
the Metropolitan's copy includes the date 1825, so it would
have been done in or after that year.

75 The Shepherd,frorn Songs of Innocence, 1789

William Blake
British, 1757-1827
Relief etching, hand-painted with watercolor
and gold; sheet 6 x 5 '12 in. (15.2 x 14 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1917 (17.10.5)

HENRY FusELI

76 The Night-Hag Visiting the Lapland Witches

Johann Heinrich Fi.issli (Henry Fuseli)
Swiss, 1741-1825
Oil on canvas; 40 x 49% in. (101.6 x 126.4 em.)
Purchase, Bequest of Lillian S. Timken, by exchange,
Victor Wilbour Memorial Fund, The Alfred N. Punnett
Endowment Fund, Marquand and Curtis Funds, 1980
(1980.4ll)

The Night-Hag Visiting the Lapland Witches

Henry Fuseli left his native Zurich for Berlin in 1763. The
next year he went to London, where, except for nine years
in Italy, he would spend most of the rest of his life. During
the early years in London, Fuseli was occupied with writing
and translating; only in the late 1760s did he decide, with
much encouragement from Sir Joshua Reynolds, to devote
himself to painting. In 1769 Fuseli left for Italy to study the
Old Masters; the profound experience of Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel would determine his approach to the human
body for the rest of his career. It wa.s also in Rome that
Fuseli first adopted literary themes for his works.
The success of John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, for
which Fuseli produced numerous works, inspired him to
form a Milton Gallery on his return to London. He executed forty-seven paintings between 1791 and 1800 for this
project, among them his finest and mo~t powerful images.
The Night-Hag Visiting the Lapland Witches is one of t~ese

works. It illustrates a scene in Paradise Lost (II, 662-666), in

which Milton compares the hell hounds that surround Satan
to those who
follow the night-hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance,
With Lapland witches, while the lab'ring moon
Eclipses at their charms.

Completed by August 1796, TheNight-HagVisitingtheLapland Witches did not sell when it was exhibited in 1799. However, it was bought in 1808 by Fuseli's biographer, James
Knowles. According to Knowles, Fuseli said to him on this
occasion: "Young man, the picture you have purchased is
one of my very best-yet no one has asked its price till
now-it requires a poetic mind to feel and love such a work."
105

106

77 Pity, 1795
William Blake
British, 1757-1827
Color monotype in tempera touched
with pen, black ink, and watercolor;
15% x 20% in. (40 x 53 em.)
Gift of Mrs. Robert W. Goelet, 1958
(58.603)

WILLIAM BLAKE

Pity
William Blake was born and died in the same years as
Thomas Rowlandson, but Blake's art depicted the creatures
of his imagination rather than those of the world around
him. Pity comes from a series of twelve monotypes Blake
made in 1795 that are as visionary as his poetry. A monotype
is a print made by creating a design, usually in printer's ink,
on a hard, nonporous surface and transferring it to paper
by means of pressure. The name implies that only one impression can be made, and while sometimes enough ink
remains on the surface so that a second or even a third printing of each image can be taken, the number remains very
limited. Although a few monotypes had been made before
Blake's time, he essentially invented the technique for himself, calling it "color printed drawing."
Most of the subjects of this series of monotypes are from
the Bible, Milton, or Shakespeare; Pity illustrates the lines
from Macbeth (I, 7):
And pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye .. . .

Blake's subject also refers to his own creation myth, The

Book of Urizen, of 1794, a personal retelling of the Creation
and Fall of Man, and the history of man until the Giving of
the Law.
107

78 Head-shaped Ewer

English
(Staffordshire, Wedgwood), ca. 1780
Black basaltes ware; H. ll 1/2 in. (29.2 em.)
Gift of Frank K. Sturgis, 1932 (32.95.14)

108

WEDGWOOD POTTERY

Admiration for the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum

led to widespread attempts at emulation. Scrutiny of the
classical remains offered new leads toward greater refinement in domestic design, and artists working with industrialists were not slow to capitalize on the ever-increasing
popularity of the antique. Neoclassicism became the primary
preoccupation at the pottery established in Staffordshire by
Josiah Wedgwood. The most familiar look in the Wedgwood
production is blue-gray combined with white, but other colorations were introduced to sustaining the impact made by
streamlined Neoclassical shapes. This head-shaped vase, copied from an Etruscan bronze in the Louvre, is of basaltes
ware, a deep gray pottery fabricated to evoke Greek vases
and ancient bronzes. The other vessel, in which an ancient
oil lamp has been adapted, combines Wedgwood's pale canecolored ware with a relief in tawny jasperware, in imitation
of ancient glyptic contrasts. The relief on the lid illustrates
three Muses watering Pegasus, after a painting in the Tomb
of the Nasonii outside Rome.
79 Vessel Derived ji"mn an Ancient Oil Lamp

English
(Staffordshire, Wedgwood), early 19th c.
Cane-colored stoneware with rosso antico
applied decoration; L. 4 'Vw in. (12.5 em.)
Rogers Fund, l9ll (11.202.3)

PAUL STORR

Tea Set
When Paul Storr made this tea set, he was a partner in the
firm of Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the royal goldsmiths.
The tea set is in the Neoclassical style, the most widespread
of the many quite different styles current in the second decade of the nineteenth century. The form of the teapot is
based on a Roman oil lamp, and the masks with serpents
twining above are probably meant to refer to Aesculapius,
the Greek god of healing. The pieces are engraved with the
arms of the countess of Antrim, for whom they were made.

80 Tea Set, 1813-14

Paul Storr
English, 1771-1844
Silver gilt;
greatest W. 10% in. (26.4 em.)
Gift of Fernanda Munn Kellog,
1974 (1974.379.1-3)

81 Mrs. james Pulham, Sr. (Frances Amys, ca.1766-1856)

John Constable
British, 1776-1837
Oil on canvas; 29% x 24% in. (75.6 x 62.9 em.)
Gift of George A. Hearn, 1906 (06.1272)

jOHN CONSTABLE

Mrs. james Pulham, Sr.

In 1818 John Constable executed more portraits than he
had in any year since 1806. He evidently hoped that through
such commissions he could secure both his reputation and
the finances of his newly enlarged family. The Pulhams already owned several landscapes by Constable when they
commissioned the present portrait, and they were immensely
satisfied with its appearance on delivery. On April 30, 1818
110

Mr. Pulham wrote the artist:

the portrait arrived safe on Saturday last, and I cannot but
express myself greatly obliged by your masterly execution of
it. It will give Mrs. Pulham and myself much pleasure to have
you, Mrs. Constable and your little one with us this Summer,
when Mrs. P. will feel gratified in being able to return the
Compliment which you have so handsomely bestowed on her.

JOHN CoNSTABLE

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden

Constable never achieved the overwhelming success of his
contemporary Turner, but his naturalist's vision and novel
painting technique had, conversely, far greater impact on
the history of nineteenth-century painting. Three of Constable's paintings were exhibited to great acclaim at the
Paris Salon of 1824; on seeing them Eugene Delacroix was
impressed by the spontaneity of Constable's interpretation
of natural effects and by the freedom with which he applied
paint. Each succeeding generation of French landscape
painters-from Corot, to Courbet, to Monet, to vari Gogh
-drew lessons from Constable's work.
This painting is a full-scale oil study for a painting of
1826 now in the Frick Collection in New York. Like many of

Constable's landscapes, it represents a scene redolent with

personal associations. John Fisher, bishop of Salisbury, was
among Constable's closest friends, and it was he who tried
to persuade the artist to complete an oil sketch of the cathedral that had been begun out-of-doors during a stay as
the bishop's guest in 1821. Constable chose instead to make
a new, slightly larger painting, which he exhibited in 1823.
The bishop then commissioned another version, with, he
hoped, "a little sunshine," to give as a wedding present to
his daughter Elizabeth. Constable made the Museum's painting as a study for this latter commission, but he took pains
to bring it to a high state of finish, including, for example, a
butterfly just to the left of the open gate.

82 Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden

John Constable
British, 1776-1837
Oil on canvas; 34% x 44 in. (88 x 111.8 em.)
Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950
(50.145.8)

83 The Lake ofZug, 1843

Joseph Mallord William Turner
British, 1775-1851
Watercolor, gouache, and colored chalks,
over traces of graphite; scraping with
penknife; 1J:% x 185/w in. (29.7 x 46.6 em.)
Marquand Fund, 1959 (59.120)

112

OVERLEAF:

(Paf(f's I J.!.-/15)

JosEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TuRNER

JosEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TuRNER

The Lake of Zug

The Grand Canal, Venice

Turner made his first visit to Switzerland in 1802 at the age

of twenty-seven, when the Treaty of Amiens, negotiated with
Napoleon, opened the Continent to English visitors once
again. His desire to see the Swiss alps may have been inspired by the alpine drawings of John Robert Cozens that
Turner copied as a young artist. Turner did not return to
Switzerland until 1836; this was followed by visits in 1841,
1842, and 1844.
The spectacular panoramas Turner admired on these trips
clearly stirred his imagination. Early in 1842, he presented
his agent, Thomas Griffith, with a novel idea for soliciting
patrons to buy his Swiss watercolor views. Collectors chose
from a selection of sample studies made by Turner that for
80 guineas a piece would be worked up into large finished
watercolors. He produced ten on commission that year. This
magnificent watercolor, depicting the Lake of Zug in the
early morning light, is one of six produced in 1843. The
sample study for this work, dated 1842, is preserved in the
Turner Bequest housed in the British Museum, London;
on the reverse, it bears the name of Turner's Scottish friend
and patron, H. A. J. Munro of Novar, who accompanied
the artist to Switzerland in 1836 and who commissioned this
watercolor as well as two others from the set. John Ruskin,
Turner's most vocal defender, commissioned two views from
the same series and eventually obtained the Metropolitan
sheet from Munro, who, according to Ruskin, found it to be
"too blue."
By 1840, Turner had become a controversial figure. His
landscape paintings-visionary expressions of the sublime
and powerful forces of nature-were beyond the grasp of
his patrons. For the same reason, Turner's Swiss watercolors
of the 1840s were not the financial success he had expected.

Turner quickly grew from a young art student trained in

executing topographical watercolors to the creator of some
of the most remarkable and original landscapes of his time.
While in Venice in September 1833, he created a series of
views of the city that betray on the one hand an ardent interest in recording what he saw, and on the other a Romantic sensibility that suffused his pictures with a sense of the
grandeur of nature, and of its magnificent light and color.
For the Venice series, which is often seen as anticipating
Monet's later developments, Turner drew on Claudian spatial structure and on the lessons of Canaletto and Guardi,
who so vividly memorialized the historic city in paint.
The present picture, which is based in part on a sketch
executed during Turner's first trip to Venice in August 1819,
combines two viewpoints along the Grand Canal: The buildings on the left are seen from the corner of Santa Maria
della Salute; those on the right are seen from a vantage
point across the canal, approximately one hundred yards
farther back, near the Campo del Traghetto de Santa Maria
del Giglio. Turner has also extended the height of the Campanile (the tower in the background at left) and added a
building at the right.
The Grand Canal, Venice was shown with five other works
by Turner in May 1835 at the Royal Academy, where it was
largely well received. A critic writing for the Literary Gazette
commented on "its general gaiety," the Times considered it
one of "his most agreeable works," and the SjJectator called it
a "superb painting." Yet a dissenting voice came from the
writer of Fraser's Magazine: Referring to the picture as "a
piece of brilliant obscurity," he cautioned Turner not to think
"that in order to be poetical it is neccessary to be almost
unintelligible."
The painting was commissioned by H. A. J. Munro of
Novar, who is said to have financed the artist's 1833 trip to
Venice. Munro, who had expected a watercolor, was at first
so disappointed by the oil painting that Turner almost declined the sale.

113

114

84 The Grand Canal, Venia

Joseph Mallord William Turner
British, 1775-IH51
Oil on canvas;
36 X 4H 1/1'! in. (91.4 X 122.2 Clll.)
Bequest of Cornelius Vanderbilt,
1899 (9~UI)
Paf.{l'

II 3: text

115

PIANO

The London branch of Erard, the famous Parisian firm

of harp and piano makers, built this magnificent piano for
the wife of the third Baron Foley. The keys and pedals
seem scarcely to have been touched, so we tan surmise that
this fine instrument was kept merely as an emblem of culture and status. No other piano so richly decorated is
known from the period. The marquetry of dyed and natural woods, engraved ivory, mother-of-pearl, abalone, and
wire illustrates many musical scenes and trophies as well as
animals, grotesque figures, floral motifs, dancers, Greek
gods, and the Foley arms. This decor was executed by George
Henry Blake, of whom nothing is known. The mechanism,
patented by Erard, is the direct ancestor of the modern
grand "action," which allows great power and rapidity in
technique; hence, Erard's pianos were favored by virtuosi
such as Franz Liszt.

85 Piano, ca. 1840

Erard and Company
English (London)
Wood, metal, various other materials;
L. 97V4 in. (247 em.)
Gift of Mrs. Henry McSweeney, 1959
(59.76)

86 Medal Commemorating the

Opening of the Coal Exchange, 1849

BENJAMIN WYON

Medal Commemorating the Opening of the

Coal Exchange
Diestruck medals reached unsurpassed heights of clarity and
perfection in the mid-nineteenth century, never more so than
in the sure hands of the Wyon family. The dedications of
bridges and other public works proved especially popular
in medallic commemorations and were limned with exhaustive, graphic pursuit of perspective and detail. On behalf of
Queen Victoria, whose portrait is in the center of the obverse of this medal, Prince Albert, accompanied by their
children, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, inaugurated the Coal Exchange in 1849. In arcs between
the portraits are small vignettes of the royal family arriving
by barge and being greeted by the Lord Mayor. On the reverse is the eye-opening vision of the new Qoal Exchange.
James Bunstone Bunning's tiered circular building stood
until the 1960s.

Benjamin Wyon
English, 1802-58
Bronze; 3 1/2 in. (8.9 em.)
Gift of the Corporation of the
City of London, 1908 (08.53.6)
Right: Obverse

87 Tazza, IH5l
Firm of Charles As prey
English (London)
Gilt bronze with malachite;
H. 5 in. (12.7 em.) Purchase,
Gifts of Irwin Untermyer, Loretta
Hines Howard and Charles Hines,
in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Edward
Hines, and.J. Pierpont Morgan,
by exchange, 1982 (1982.H8.7)

TAZZA

One of a pair, this tazza-an Italian word referring to a

shallow cup on a high, footed stem-belonged to a desk set
made of gilt bronze and malachite, of which the Metropolitan Museum conserves eight pieces. The whole is described
in some detail in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue
of the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition. To leave no doubt as
to his firm's authorship, Charles Asprey 'had each of the
pieces engraved underneath with his name and address in
Bond Street and the number of his section at the Crystal
Palace. The eclectic aggregations of style that proliferated
at that international showing are evidenced in the desk set:
The Italian Renaissance. is clearly the chief influence in the
tazza shape of this vessel, but Greco-Roman and Celtic overtones are also discernible throughout the set. The firm took
advantage of the latest industrial progress in using techniques such as electroplating.
117

FURNISHING CHINTZ

From the early eighteenth century the English repeatedly

rediscovered and revived the Gothic style in art, architecture, and literature. Interest in the art of the Middle
Ages-at least its appearance-further increased after the
Church Building Act was passed in 1818; in the following
fourteen years 174 churches were built in Gothic style. The
1830s witnessed a developing concern for ecclesiology-the
correctness of religious ornament in design, type, and use
-and Augustus Pugin began to publish his definitive works
on ornament of the Middle Ages.
This furnishing chintz, with its pattern of church windows replete with pointed arches and tracery, was intended
to be used as a window blind, and demonstrates that the
Gothic style was also popular for domestic use. The arms
are those of the Campbell family, but like the Tudor rose,
they are probably used here strictly as a decorative element.
88 Furnishing Chintz of Gothic Windows
English, 1830-35
Cotton, roller printed in red and black with
blue and yellow added by surface roller;
84 x 25 1/~ in. (213.3 x 64.2 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1963 (63.55.2)

118

89 Cabinet with The Backgammon Players

English, 1861
Designed by Philip Webb (British 1831-1915);
painting by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
(British, 1833-98); made by Morris, Marshall,
Faulkner and Company Painted and gilded wood,
the doors decorated with an oil painting on leather;
H. 73 in. (185.4 em.) Rogers Fund, 1926 (26.54)
Below: detail

CABINET WITH THE BACKGAMMON PLAYERS

This early masterpiece of the Arts and Crafts Movement

exemplifies the collaborative endeavors of William Morris
and his circle to improve standards of design. Morris believed that a return to the principles of medieval production, involving fine artists in the creation of functional
objects, could help to overcome the evils of industrialization.
This cabinet, one of several in which Morris enlisted the
participation of Sir Edward Burne-Janes, is an attempt to
erase the distinction between the fine and applied arts. Moreover, the painting itself is on leather with a punched background, itself a craftsman's medium.

Although the cabinet is usually described as in the "Medieval Style," in fact it is a vivid example of the ability of the
Morris firm to convert the eclecticism that marked much of
the art of the latter nineteenth century into an original and
modern style. Indeed, while Burne-Janes's painted figures
are in medieval costume, much of the decoration is as Oriental as it is medieval in inspiration. Philip Webb's straightforward design, however, which boldly displays the casework
skeleton on the exterior, anticipates the emphasis on structural elements that would inform the design revolution of
the next century.

120

90 The Love Song (Le Chant d'Amour)

Sir Edward C~ley Burne-Jones
British, 1833-98
Oil on canvas; 45 x 61% in. (114.3 x 155.9 em.)
The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Fund,
1947 (47.26)

SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES

The Love Song (Le Chant d'Amour)

In 1857 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who in 1848 had been a
founding member of the circle of artists known as the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, assembled a group of seven friends
to help him decorate the Oxford Union Building with scenes
from Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Edward BurneJanes was one of the driving forces of this "second Brotherhood," and his Love Song, with its figures reminiscent of the
quattrocento Venetian painter Carpaccio and its "Arthurian"
landscape bathed in evening light, reflects the profound
influence of both the Italian Renaissance and the gothicizing
Pre-Raphaelite movement.
This painting was begun in 1868 and completed in 1877.
It is the definitive version of several works by Burne-Jones
based on the following refrain from an old Breton song:
Helas! je sais un chant d'amour,/Triste ou gai, tour a. tour. (Alas, I
know a love song,/Sad or happy, each in turn.)
Perhaps one of Burne-Jones's most famous and lyrical
paintings, The Love Song was exhibited, for the first time,
alongside seven other of his works, at London's Grosvenor
Gallery in 1878. There it received a certain amount of
publicity. Henry James, for example, in a review for the
American magazine The Nation, remarked that the color was
"a brilliant success ... like some mellow Giorgione or some
richly-glowing Titian ... full of depth and brownness, the
shadows ... warm, the splendour subdued."
121

91 Portmit of Eugene De Lacroix, 1828

Pierre jean David d'Angers
French, 1788-1856
Bronze medallion; D. 4 1/~ in. (10.8 em.)
Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1898 (98. 7.36)

EuGENE DELACROIX

Horse and Tiger

PIERRE JEAN DAVID n'ANGERS

Portrait of Eugene Delacroix

David d' Angers emerges more and more clearly as a titan of
sculpture. Museum goers, at some remove from his monuments or the array of models displayed by his native city of
Angers, may know him best for his more accessible portrait
medallions, often seen in sets. At their best, they seem like
lightning flashes illuminating the artist's fellow members of
the Romantic movement. Delacroix, seen here at thirty, is
modeled in a few strokes with determined speed, befitting
the brilliant promise of the young painter.

92 Horse and Tiger, 1828

Eugene Delacroix
French,l798-1863
Lithograph; 81/.t x 11 in.
(21 x 27.8 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1922 (22.63.43)

122

Delacroix's fascination with animals is manifested in this

depiction of a tiger attacking a horse. During the 1820s
Delacroix drew more studies of horses than of any other
animal, but he also went with the sculptor Antoine Barye to
the Jardin des Plantes to draw more exotic species. Delacroix
was interested in the idea, much discussed at this period,
that similarities between animal and human physiognomies
were analogous to similarities in their natures, and a telling
entry in his journal describes humans as "tigers and ... wolves
conspired one against the other for mutual destruction."
Delacroix was the third major artist to work in lithography
-after Goya and Theodore Gericault-which had been invented in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The
Museum's impression of Horse and Tiger is a very rare, very
fresh first state-before any lettering-of a print that is
rare in any of its four states. It precedes the artist's more
famous Royal Tiger and Atlas Lion, and it is about one third
their size, but Delacroix's masterful focusing of violent energy gives the lithograph a monumentality despite its relatively small size and apparent haste of execution.

93 The Daughter of Abraham-ben-Chimol

and Her Servant, 1832

Eugene Delacroix
French,1798-1863
Watercolor over pencil ; 8% x 631!! in.
(22.3 x 16.2 em.) Bequest of
Walter C. Baker, 1971 (1972.118.210)

EuGENE DELACROIX

The Daughter of Ab'raham-ben-Chimol and Her Servant

Eugene Delacroix painted this sumptuous watercolor in 1832,
when he accompanied the comte de Mornay to Morocco on
his mission as goodwill ambassador to the sultan, Abd-arRahman. The artist filled several sketchbooks and a diary
with his excited impressions of North African life. It was
probably during the two-week quarantine at Toulon on the
mission's return to France that Delacroix produced this
and seventeen other highly finished watercolors; they were
signed and presented to the count as a souvenir of the trip.
Abraham .. ben-Chimol, the father of the sitter, was the dragoman assigned to the delegation.
123

94 The Abduction of Rebecca, 1846

Eugene Delacroix
French, 1798-1863
Oil on canvas; 39 1/2 x 32 1/-t in. (100.3 x 81.9 em.)
Wolfe Fund, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection,
1903 (03.30)

95 Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret

Eugene Delacroix
French,1798-1863
Oil on canvas; 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.131)

EuGENE DELACROIX

EuGENE DELACROIX

The Abduction of Rebecca

Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret

As a rich source for exotic and dramatically violent themes,

the novels of Sir Walter Scott, especially his famous historical romance Ivanhoe, were immensely popular with Romantic painters. Eugene Delacroix, despite his reservations about
their literary merit, repeatedly found inspiration in these
writings.
This painting, executed in 1846 and exhibited in the Salon
of that year, illustrates a scene from Chapter XXXI of Ivanhoe: During the sack and burning of the castle of Front-deBoeuf (seen in flames in the ~ackground), the beautiful Rebecca was carried off by two Saracen slaves at the command
of the Christian knight Bois-Guilbert, who had long coveted
her. Intense drama is created as much by 'the contorted poses
and compacted space as by the artist's use of vivid color.
Contemporary critics praised the work's spontaneity and
power, its harmony of color and pathos of movement. The
painting was much admired by Theophile Thore and Charles
Baudelaire, two of the most perceptive critics of the nineteenth century. Baudelaire wrote that "Delacroix's painting
is like nature; it has a horror of emptiness."

Eugene Delacroix was perhaps the last great French painter

to treat convincingly subjects taken from the Old and New
Testaments. Just as Delacroix's approach to color and composition resembled that of Rubens, so did his complete
acceptance of Christianity enable him, like Rubens, to render
palpable and persuasive lessons of human faith and endurance. Delacroix took as the subject of this picture the lesson
recorded in Mark 4:35-41, in which Jesus demonstrated his
divine powers by calming the waters and rebuked his followers for lack of faith.
The image of a storm-tossed boat recurs throughout
Delacroix's oeuvre, appearing earliest in 1822 in the Bark of
Dante (Paris, Louvre), which was the first work he exhibited
publicly. Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret, one of fourteen representations of the subject executed in the last decade of
the artist's career, is among the later works in the series.
The figures in the boat form a remarkably cohesive group,
despite the diversity of the poses, and the composition as a
whole seems to refer to Theodore Gericault's 1819 Raft of
the Medusa (Paris, Louvre).
125

96 PairofTnl-1-ight Crnulf'!ahm. ca. IH57-65

Antoine Louis Barve
French. 1796-IH75
Bronze; H. of both 24:Y, in. (63 em.) Gift of
1\laria A. S. de Rcinis, 1976 (1976.425.1,2)

97 Theseus Fighting the Centaur Bianor

Antoine Louis Barye
French,1796-1875
First modeled in 1849, cast ca. 1867
Bronze; H. 50 in. (127 em.)
Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1885 (85.3)

ANTOINE LOUIS BARYE

ANTOINE LOUIS BARYE

Pair of Ten-Light Candelabra

Theseus Fighting the Centaur Bianor

Rising prosperity and the expansion of the middle class in

nineteenth-century France created a wide demand for works
of applied art. About 1835 Antoine Louis Barye established
his own foundry, and the catalogues he issued between 184 7
and 1865 list not only the small sculptures for which he is
justly famous, but also decorative cups, incense burners, fireguards, ink bottles, and so on. The firm employed a number
of founders who were supplied with the sculptor's models.
The fine finish and detailing of the bronzes produced under
this system are a tribute to the skill of the best French founders of the period.
In designing these objects, Barye drew upon his wide familiarity with the decorative vocabularies of the past. This
design, described as "Greek candelabrum with ten lights" in
one of Barye's catalogues issued between 1855 and 1865, reflects the increasing concern with archaeological correctness
that characterizes the Neoclassical style of the nineteenth
century. This concern was due in part, no doubt, to the growing body of publications illustrating artifacts from archaeological excavations in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor.

Barye became the animal sculptor par excellence during the

Romantic period, inspiring a school of imitators known as
the animaliers, yet his thorough grounding in classical prototypes is evident in this highly charged representation of an
incident from the battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs
described in Book XII of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Barye surely
knew the series of metopes from the Parthenon in the British Museum depicting the Greek legend of the La piths and
Centaurs. But the cool perfection of the fifth-century Greek
bas-reliefs are, in fact, greatly removed in spirit from the
essentially Romantic vision of the nineteenth-century French
sculptor, who chose to focus on the raging violence of close
combat between the two adversaries. In the elemental struggle for survival, the rugged Greek hero bestrides the centaur, savagely gripping the half-human, half-equine creature
by the throat in order to deliver the death blow with his
club. It is a gesture recently recognized as having been borrowed from the sixteenth-century marble Hercules and a
Centaur by the Mannerist sculptor Giambologna that stands
in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.

126

127

98 Hagar in the Wilderness, 1835

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
French,1796-1875
Oil on canvas; 71 x l06 1/2 in.
(180.3 x 270.5 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1938 (38.64)

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE Co RoT

Hagar in the Wilderness

This picture, shown at the Salon of 1835, is the earliest of
four large, ambitious biblical works that Corot was to exhibit in the Salon over the next ten years. As with the Museum's Destruction of Sodom, 1843-44, this painting illustrates a
particular episode in the story of the family of Abraham,
the father of Israel (Genesis 21:16-17):
And she went, and sat down [over against] him a good way
off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the
death of the child. And she sat [over against] him, and lifted
up her voice and wept.
And God heard the voice of the lad; apd the angel of God
called to Hagar out of Heaven, and said unto her, What aileth
thee, Hagar? Fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the
lad where he is.

Co rot began this work just before his second trip to Italy
in May of 1834 and finished it upon his return to Paris; the
general character of the landscape appears to be inspired
by memories of his trip. However, the rocky cliffs that dominate the middle ground depend upon studies made at Civita
Castellana on an earlier visit to Italy, in 1825-28, and the
trees and great boulders in the foreground come from
sketches made in the forest of Fontainebleau in the early
1830s. The large tree in the background is based on Corot's
study Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Breau, also in the Museum's collection.
128

129

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE Co RoT

The Destruction of Sodom

One of Camille Corot's most ambitious compositions, this
painting shows Lot and his daughters fleeing from the burning city of Sod om, which God had condemned to flames for
its wickedness (Genesis 19: 15-26). Angels had warned them:
"Escape for thy life; look not behind thee ... lest thou be
consumed." But Lot's wife, here shown at the right, did not
heed the warning: She looked back and was turned into a
pillar of salt.
Corot's original conception, painted in 1843, was rejected
by the Salon jury of that year but accepted in 1844. The
picture found few admirers among critics, who censured
the effort severely. Even Corot was dissatisfied; in a telling

130

comment characteristic of his self-effacing humor, the artist

remarked that he had wept over Lot's wife, hoping to melt
her. In 1857, Corot reworked the entire composition: He
cut it at the top and at the right side and introduced considerable changes to the figures and landscape. The resulting
composition, seen here, was exhibited to mixed reviews in
the Salon of 1857.
By the turn of the century, critics and historians acknowledged the expressive and dramatic power of Corot's The
Destruction of Sodom, aspects of the work that, like its unusually prominent figures, depart from Corot's generally gentler and subtler treatment of landscape themes.

99 The Destruction of Sodom

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
French, 1796-1875
Oil on canvas; 36% x 71% in.
(92.4 x 181.3 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.18)

100 The Letter

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
French,1796-1875
Oil on wood;
211/2 x 141/4 in. (54.6 x 36.2 em.)
Gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection
(29.160.3)

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE Co RoT

The Letter
In the 1860s and 70s, Corot painted a number of lyrical
studies of female figures. Few were exhibited during his
lifetime, however, and it was not until the early twentieth
century that they began to receive the kind of admiration
critics and collectors had reserved for his landscapes. Yet as
Corot admitted: "I have derived as much pleasure painting
these women as in painting my landscapes. On their Hesh I
have seen the power of the hours unroll-as beautiful, as
enchanting as on the earth, the water, the hills, the leaves."
Corot's figure pieces-such as The Letter, which probably
dates to about 1865-typically evoke a quiet moment of
daydreaming, reading, or reverie. Here, a simply dressed
woman, her white chemise opened to expose her shoulders,
sits holding a letter. The motif, mood, gentle harmony of
tones, and broad treatment of light in clearly divided planes
seem to reflect Corot's awareness of seventeenth-century
Dutch painting, particularly that of Vermeer and de Hooch.
131

132

101 Ville d'Avray

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
French,1796-1875
Oil on canvas;
21% x 31 V2 in. (54.9 x 80 em.)
Bequest of Catharine Lorillard
Wolfe, 1887, Catharine Lorillard
Wolfe Collection (87.15.141)

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE CO ROT

Ville d'Avray
After the mid-1840s, Corot spent the majority of each year
in the environs of Paris, especially at the family property
in Ville d'Avray. The landscapes painted here-views of
wooded glades delicately modulated in dull greens, browns,
and an exquisite range of silvery grays, all veiled in misty
light-won him considerable success during his lifetime. The
popularity of such works as Ville d'Avray may be related, in
part, to the nostalgia for an arcadian past that was so much
a part of contemporary poetry, literature, and painting. Indeed, when Corot exhibited Ville d'Avray at the Salon of 1870,
the painting inspired comments by the Salon critic Camille
Lemonnier that help explain the significance Corot's late
landscapes held for the public:
... I salute that smooth master, that Virgilian poet-no, even
better, that peasant's soul, Corot. Before the enchantment of
his work one forgets what one has seen in art and what one
knows about criticism. It is no longer a canvas, and he no
longer a painter.... I open a window and I am at home in a
poet's nature.

Quite typically, Corot's late works reflect a vision of nature that at once reflects a classicist's sense of proportion
and serene order, a romantic's revery, and a naturalist's sense
of detail. Elegant in its simplicity of statement, Ville d'Avray
may be seen as a summation of the leading tendencies of
ni__neteenth-century landscape painting to date, and a platform for the later Impressionist developments.

133

102 Gobelle's Mill at Optevoz

Charles Franc,:ois Daubigny

Fren.ch, 1817-78
Oil on canvas; 22% x 36If2 in. (57.8 x 92.7 em.)
Bequest of Robert Graham Dun, 1900 (11.45.3)

CHARLES FRAN<;OIS DAUBIGNY

Gobelle's Mill at Optevoz

Following the practice of landscapists such as Corot and
Theodore Rousseau, Charles Fran<;ois Daubigny painted
many of his early works from studies made on extended
trips through the French provinces. In 1849 he made his
first visit to Optevoz, a town in the Rhone Valley east of
Lyons, and during the following decade he painted views of
many of the motifs there. This peaceful evening scene is
thought to have been painted about 1852 from drawings
-like the large charcoal study in the Museum's collection
-that were made during a stay that year.

103 The Forest in Winter at Sunset

Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau

French, 1812-67
Oil on canvas;
64 x 102:YH in. (162.6 x 260 em.)
Gift of P.A.B. Widener, 1911 (11.4)

134

PIERRE ETIENNE THEODORE RoussEAu

The Forest in Winter at Sunset

One of Theodore Rousseau's most poetic and personal landscapes, this forest scene vivifies the intimate dialectic between artist and nature to which the painters of the Barbizon movement aspired. In this picture, Rousseau concerned
himself less with recording the natural appearance of the
trees than with conveying "the echoes they have placed in
our soul." The result is an imposing vision of the life of
growing things, indestructible in their chaotic vitality and
majestically dwarfing humanity. Symbolic of the grandeur
of nature, the oaks tower above the tiny figures of two old
peasant women bent beneath their bundles of wood.

Rousseau considered The Forest in Winter at Sunset to be

his most important painting, and he refused to sell it during
his lifetime. According to his friend and biographer, Alfred
Sensier, the artist began this ambitious canvas in the winter
of 1845-46 while at Isle-Adam, a town on the River Oise,
with a fellow Barbizon painter, Jules Dupre. The su~ject,
however, is not a scene from the region of Isle-Adam, but a
recollection of the gnarled trees in Bas-Breau in the forest
of Fontainebleau. Although Rousseau may have exhibited
the painting in Paris in 184 7, he continued to work on it, off
and on, until the end of his life.

104 Le Repas des Cantonniers

Jean Francois Millet
French, 1814-75
Black crayon, heightened with
white gouache, on buff paper;
10% x 8% in. (27.6 x 22.5 em.)
Rogers Fund, 1926 (26.243.1)

jEAN FRAN<;OIS MILLET

Le Repas des Canionniers

From the time Jean Franc;ois Millet joined the artistic community in Barbizon in 1849, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the portrayal of peasants and their life in the
village and countryside. His paintings and prints enjoyed
enormous success-even in America. Millet was also a prolific draftsman and left nearly twenty-five hundred drawings, of which the largest group, numbering some five hundred, is preserved in the Louvre. This fine study depicts
three roadworkers who have stopped to rest and eat their
meal. Their tools lie in the ditch in the foreground, well
below the high horizon line on which the animated figures
are placed.
136

105 Woman with a Rake, ca. 1856-57

Jean Franc;:ois Millet
French, 1814-75
Oil on canvas; 15 5/x x 131/~ in.
(39.7 x 34.3 em.)
Gift of Stephen C. Clark, 1938 (38. 7 5)

jEAN FRAN<;OIS MILLET

Woman with a Rake

In addition to his exhibition pictures of the 1850s, Millet
painted a number of intimate studies of peasant life. Woman
with a Rake is typical of these smaller-scale works, which, as a
rule, are confined to one or two figures who dominate their
pastoral or interior setting, and who, by virtue of the composition's simple, massive forms and q'uiet mood, take on an
emblematic aspect. The idealized but unsentimental view of
peasants in these works appealed to a widely felt nostalgia
for a rural past that was undisturbed by the onslaught of
industrialization.
Millet first treated the subject of Woman with a Rake in
a woodcut, one of a series of ten Labors of the Fields pub-

lished in a popular periodical L'Illustration on February 5,

1853. In 1889, this same series would inspire a number of
painted copies by van Gogh, including one (present location
unknown) based on the present work.
Woman with a Rake, which dates to about 1856-57, was
included in a show held in 1860 by the Parisian dealer Martinet, in whose gallery avant-garde artists such as Gustave
Courbet and Edouard Manet also exhibited. The picture
was well received by critics: Zacharie Astruc praised Woman
with a Rake as a "masterpiece of light and feeling"; and
Theophile Gautier noted Millet's truth, tenderness, and
above all, his deep feeling for the subject.
137

106 Haystacks: Autumn

Jean Fran<;:ois Millet
French, 1814-75
Oil on canvas; 3FIH x 39 in. (81 x 99.1 em.)
Bequest of Lillian S. Tim ken, 1959 (60. 71.12)

jEAN FRAN yO IS MILLET

Haystacks: Autumn
This picture is from a series representing the four seasons
that the industrialist Frederick Hartmann commissioned
from Millet in March 1868. _At that time, Hartmann had
apparently been shown pastel studies of some, if not all of
the projected scenes. The pastel version of the present picture, completed in 1867-68 and now in the Rijksmuseum
H.W. Mesdag, The Hague, is identical in composition to the
painting that was not completed until some seven years later.
In addition to the pastel rendering, Millet made several
drawings in preparation for this canvas, both for the entire
composition and for the haystacks.
In 1864-65 Millet had treated the subject of the four seasons as a decorative scheme for the Hotel Thomas in Paris.
These panels were carried out in a traditional classicizing
manner, imbued with Millet's naturalistic spirit. In the later
programme, principally executed between 1873 and 1874,
Millet, unburdened by the requisites of a specific architectural setting, had free reign in subject and approach. As in
Haystacks: Autumn, he relied on a characteristic repertoire of
rustic scenes to highlight the labors of the year; a vivid sense
of the season and time of day was further carried by weather,
quality of sunlight, and color. Here, in the light of late afternoon, yellow haystacks-the culmination of summer harvest-are juxtaposed against dark, purple storm cloudsharbingers of the threatening winter ahead.
138

139

HoNORE DAUMIER

HONORE DAUMIER

The Third-Class Carriage

King Louis Philippe, Past, Present, and Future

In 1839 Daumier began to depict groups of people in public conveyances and waiting rooms, and for more than two
decades he treated these themes in lithographs, watercolors, and oil paintings. His characterizations of trav.elers document the period in the mid-nineteenth century when the
cities of France and their inhabitants were undergoing the
immense changes brought about by industrialization. A lifelong social critic, Daumier, like Rembrandt, was able to infuse
his renderings of contemporary life with a broad significance
that touched on the inner character of mankind.
Many of Daumier's paintings seem to have been executed
between 1860 and 1863, when he stopped producing lithographs for the satirical newspaper Le Charivari, ostensibly to
devote himself to painting. The Third-Class Carriage is believed to have been painted between 1863 and 1865.

This lithograph was published in La Caricature, a political

weekly begun by Charles Philipon in 1830 and closed by the
government in 1835. Published "by the young, for the young,"
according to its announcement, this journal included among
its writers Honore de Balzac (under a nom de plume) and
among its artists Honore Daumier. Daumier produced about
four thousand lithographs in over forty years of working
for Philipon's publications, first La Caricature and then Le
Charivari, a four-page satirical daily founded in 1832, which
continued to be published into the twentieth century.
After the revolution of July 1830 that deposed Charles X,
Louis Philippe had come to the throne, with the support of
the bourgeoisie, monarchists, and liberals. His pledged
reforms did not materialize, and in May 1831 Philipon cartooned government promises as so many soap bubbles van-

107 The Third-Class Carriage

Honore Daumier
French, 1808-79
Oil on canvas; 25% x 35V2 in. (65.4 x 90.2 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
The H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.129)

140

r,

r, . .,

'

tl .. .

ishing into air. It was Philipon who hit upon the idea of
satirizing Louis Philippe as a pear. The head of the "Citizen
King" did have heavy jowls and a small crown, and since in
French slang the word "pear" also meant "fool" or "simpleton," the caricature was too clever to resist. Philipon was
arrested and fined for this witticism (and he was jailed for
other "crimes against the king"), but the cartoonists continued to use the symbol. Daumier, who had also served a
prison term-for a cartoon of 1831 depicting Louis Philippe
as Rabelais's Gargantua-drew Past, Present, and Future for
the issue of January 9, 1834. The accompanying explanation was mildly threatening, characterizing the "face that
will be" as "dejected and decrepit" ano .ending with a twoline verse: "For the guard that watches the barricade of the
Louvre/Is not there to protect the King."

.o
108 King Louis Philippe, Past, Present, and
Future, 1834

Honore Daumier
French, 1808-79
Lithograph; 101/4 x 8 in. (26 x 20.2 em.)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941 (41.16.1)

OVERLEAF:

jEAN BAPTISTE CARPEAUX

(Pages 142-143)

Ugolino and His Sons

Romantic preoccupation with extreme physical and emotional states reached a zenith in this work. The subject is
taken from Canto XXXIII of the Inferno, in which Dante
described the cruel death by starvation of the thirteenthcentury Pisan count U golino della Gherardesca, a suspected
traitor who was condemned to die imprisoned in a tower
with his sons and grandsons. Carpeaux chose to depict the
moment at which the count, yielding to hunger and despair,
contemplates cannibalism.
Completed in the last year of the sculptor's residence at
the French Academy in Rome, the work caused a public
sensation, and indeed, the boldness and yigor of Carpeaux's
plaster model contrasted sharply with the prevailing formulas for sculpture propounded by the Academy. It immediately established Carpeaux as the heir of the French
Romantic sculptors of the 1830s, sculptors such as Auguste
Preault and especially Frant;ois Rude, whom Carpeaux admired tleeply and with whom he had studied.
In Rome, Carpeaux developed a special reverence for Michelangelo, and much of the power of the Ugolino derives
from prototypes for the central figure that the young sculptor found in the work of the sixteenth-century master. The

anatomical realism of the children is the result of direct observation of nature, however, and Carpeaux's sketches of
dying children survive as evidence of his painstaking preparatory studies. By his own admission, the antique Laocoon
group in the Vatican served as inspiration for the overall
composition.
Cast in bronze at the order of the French Ministry of Fine
Arts, in 1863 Ugolino and His Sons was appropriately placed
in the gardens of the Tuileries in Paris as a pendant to a
copy of the Laocoon. The Museum's marble was executed in
Paris by the practitioner Bernard under Carpeaux's supervision. It was completed in time for exhibition by the owner
of the Saint-Beat marble quarry at the Paris Exposition
Universelle of 1867.

109 Ugolino and his Sons

Jean Baptiste Carpeaux
French, modeled ca. 1860-61, executed 1865-67
Saint-Beat marble; H. 77 in. (195.5 em.) Purchase,
Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation,
Inc. Gift, Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay
Foundation, Inc. Gift and Fletcher Fund, 1967 (67.250)

141

RosA BoNHEUR

The Horse Fair

When Rosa Bonheur exhibited The Horse Fair in the Salon
of 1853, her reputation as an artist was fairly well established by the paintings, drawings, and sculpture she had
shown in the annual Salons since 1841. Yet the recognition
won by these prior efforts could hardly have anticipated the
resounding success of The Horse Fair. Though her oeuvre,
as a whole, was characterized by a preference for movement, dramatic lighting, and fresh and direct observationwith almost anatomical precision in the treatment of animals
-few works attained the dash and grandeur of The Horse
Fair. And none achieved the same degree of acclaim. Vastly

admired on the Continent, where it was exhibited in Paris,

Ghent, and Bordeaux, the painting was subsequently shown
in England and the United States, becoming one of our bestknown works of art.
Rosa Bonheur had conceived the idea for The Horse Fair
in 1851 but did not begin work until 1852. Twice a week,
for a year and a half, she made sketches at the horse market
in Paris, on the Boulevard de l'H6pital near the asylum of
the Salpetriere, dressed as a man in order to attract less
attention from the horse dealers and buyers. The picture,
originally called Le Marchi aux Chevaux de Paris (The Horse

Market in Paris), shows with accuracy the trees lining the

boulevard and the cupola of the old hospital. Certain passages of the landscape, however, were criticized for their
summary treatment when the work was first shown at the
Salon. A comparison of the picture in its present state with
an engraving made at the time of the Salon, shows that in
response to criticism the artist repainted areas of the ground,
trees, and sky. Apparently these changes were made in 1855,
as is suggested by the numeral 5, which follows the date
1853 at the lower right.
The Horse Fair was preceded by numerous drawings and

at least three painted studies that document the artist's exploration of various compositional solutions to the subject.
In arriving at the final scheme, she drew inspiration from
the Parthenon frieze, from the noted animal painters Stubbs
and Delacroix, and especially from Gericault's Cour de Chevaux aRome (Horse Race in Rome). Later, Bonheur referred to
The Horse Fair as her own "Parthenon frieze."

110 The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur
French, 1822-99
Oil on canvas; 961f~ x 199 1/:! in.
(244.5 x 406.8 em.) Gift of
Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887 (87.25)

AucusTE PREAULT

jupiter and the Sphinx

Preault occupies a central position among French artists who
in the 1830s revolted against what they considered to be the
outworn conventions of Neoclassical art. Like much sculpture of the Romantic movement, his work was rejected by
the jurors of the Salons throughout the 1830s and 40s and
thus denied public exhibition. Official recognition came after
the Revolution of 1848, and Preault began to receive commissions from the government. One, granted in 1867, was
for a pair of pendant sculptures for the garden of the imperial palace at Fontainebleau. This plaster group is the
sculptor's working model for one of two monumental stone
groups completed in 1870 and still at Fontainebleau.

The sculpture, marvelous for its unity of human and animal form, represents the lord of heaven and father of the
gods seated on a horned sphinx of somewhat ambiguous
sex. The rugged head of the god, specific in character rather
than archetypal, can be recognized as that of Mausolus, the
Persian satrap whose fabulous tomb at Halicarnassus had
been discovered only a few years before the sculpture was
commissioned. Like Venus in the companion sculpture,
Preault's enigmatic Jupiter has no precedent in antique iconography and is apparently the original product of the sculptor's deeply Romantic imagination, embodying some private
allegorical meaning.

111 Jupiter and the Sphinx, 1868

Antoine Augustin (called Auguste) Preault
French, 1809-79
Tinted plaster;
H. 46 1/s in. (117 em.) Purchase,
Lita Annenberg Hazen Charitable Trust
Gift, in honor of Ambassador Walter H.
Annenberg, 1981 (1981.319.2)

112 Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864

Gustave Moreau
French, 1826-98
Oil on canvas; 81 1/4 x 41 V4 in.
(206.4 x 104.$ em.) Bequest of
William It Herriman, 1921

(21.134J)
Page 148: text

GusTAVE MoREAU

Oedipus and the Sphinx

(Page 147)

Gustave Moreau's interpretation of the Greek myth of Oedipus draws heavily on Ingres's Oedipus and the Sphinx (Paris,
Louvre). Both artists chose to represent the moment when
Oedipus confronted the winged monster in a rocky pass
outside the city of Thebes. Unlike her other victims, Oedipus could answer the Sphinx's riddle, thus saving himself
and the besieged Thebans.
Moreau's painting was extremely successful at the Salon
of 1864, where it won a medal and established the artist's
reputation. Although it inspired some sarcastic criticism and
was the subject of one of Honore Daumier's cartoons, it was
generally well received. Edgar Degas, usually acerbic in his
criticism, defended it as a work of art; he was at this time a

close friend of Moreau, however, and he may have defended

the friend more than the picture. Other contemporary critics offered a variety of interpretations of the theme: Oedipus was thought to symbolize contemporary man, and the
confrontation between the Sphinx and Oedipus was believed
to symbolize the opposition of female and male principles,
or possibly the triumph of life over death.
Moreau's dark vision of an antiquity crowded with archaeological detail, in which scenes of suffering or passion transpire in dreamlike states, is a most remarkable example of
the eclecticism o(the mid-nineteenth century. His work, in
turn, served as an important source for the Neoromantic
writers and Symbolist painters of the end of the century.

GusTAVE CouRBET

The Source of the Loue

The rocky grotto at the source of the river Loue, a famed
natural wonder in the area of Courbet's native village of
Ornans, served as the subject for a number of the artist's
paintings. In the spring of 1864 he wrote to his friend the
dealer Luquet, "I've been to the source of the Loue these
days and made four landscapes about 1 meter 40." The Metropolitan picture, painted on this scale, seems to be among
the group of four. In the others (Hamburg, Kunsthalle;
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Buffalo, AlbrightKnox Art Gallery), Courbet focused on the cavern itself,

whereas in the present work he shows the scene from farther away, including the old mill at the left and the wooden
scaffolding that leads the eye into the somber depths beyond.
Though often repeated by Courbet, the many landscapes
painted at this site retain their freshness and originality of
vision. This is due in part to the different vantage points
from which he observed the cavernous grotto, but equally,
to the great variety in his palette, ranging from a subtle key
of cool green or warm pinks and browns to dramatic complementary color contrasts.

113 The Source ofthe Loue

Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 39lf-l x 56 in.
(99.7 x 142.2 em.) Bequest of
Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection
(29.100.122)

OVERLEAF:

GusTAVE CouRBET

(Paw)s 150-151)

Young Ladies from the Village

This painting, which initiated a series of pictures devoted to
the lives of women, shows Gustave Courbet's three sisters
out for a walk in the Communal, a small valley near his
native village of Ornans.
Painted during the winter of 1851-52, Ylmng Ladies from
the Village was preceded by several preparatory studies, including an oil sketch (Leeds, City Art Gallery) in which he
established the leading features of the Metropolitan picture,
from the grouping of figures to the landscape setting. However, in the final work he gave the figures a more prominent
role; they are larger in size and, moved closer to the foreground, dominate the scene. He also altered the landscape,
choosing not to include the two large trees silhouetted against
the sky in the study. Traces of a large tree that Courbet had
deliberated incorporating into the final composition are still
visible in the sky of the Metropolitan picture. It is also evident that he repainted and enlarged the cattle.
Shortly after completing Young Ladies from the Village, Courbet wrote to Champfleury, the author who had championed
Realism, of his confidence that this "graceful" picture would
win the favor of critics who had treated him so harshly in
the past. However, when the painting was exhibited in the
Salon of 1852 critics bitterly attacked the work, finding it
tasteless and clumsy, and berating the common features and
countrified costumes of the three girls, the "ridiculous" little dog and cattle, and the painting's overall lack of unity, as
well as traditional perspective and scale. Ironically, the very
effects that Courbet worked hardest to achieve were those
that proved most disturbing.
149

150

114 Young Ladies from the Village ( Les Demoiselles

de Village), 1851-52

Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 76:Y-t x 102% in. (195 x 261 em.)
Gift of Harry Payne Bingham, 1940 (40.175)
Page 149: text

151

GusTAVE CouRBET

Woman with a Parrot

Painted in 1865-66 in Gustave Courbet's Paris studio on the
rue Hautefeuille, Woman with a Parrot is said to have been
inspired by the Realist critic Theophile Thore. The critic,
admiring the reclining figure in Courbet's The Awakening
(or Venus and Psyche) of 1864 (formerly Berlin, Gerstenberg
collection, now destroyed), supposedly remarked: "Ah, if
you were to wake her up and stretch out her legs and make
her lift up her arm with a flower or a bird perched on it, or
something like that, what a charming picture it would be!"
Although Courbet has clearly adopted from his 1864 picture the pose of the reclining nude and also such motifs as
the canopy and one of the twisted columns, it should be
noted that he had already, in 1861, introduced a striking
macaw into his Portrait of a Woman (Paris, private collection).
Like the odalisques in seraglios, Bacchantes, Venuses, and
classical nymphs made fashionable by official artists such
as Paul Baudry and Alexandre Cabanel, the erotic content
of Courbet's Woman with a Parrot appealed to Second Empire taste. Yet Courbet's mastery of flesh-his use of subtly
varied pigments in the modeling of the female body-added
an illusion of reality that left behind frigid academicism while

152

it approached the sensuosity of Renoir's nudes. This sense

of realism was, in the eyes of some contemporary critics,
Courbet's failing. When the painting was shown in the Salon
of 1866, critics censured Courbet's "lack of taste," as well as
the model's "ungainly" pose and "disheveled" hair, comments that make clear that Courbet's Woman with a Parrot
was seen as a real type, a courtesan of the demimonde.
These reactions aside, Courbet continued to regard Woman
with a Parrot as one of his great successes, and in 1867 he
includeq it in his second private exhibition. The work also
seems to have made quite an impression on contemporary
artists: In 1866 Edouard Manet set to work on his version of
the subject, Woman with a Parrot (also in the collection of this
museum), which, when it was exhibited in the Salon of 1868,
led one critic to remark that Manet "has borrowed the parrot from his friend Courbet and placed it on a perch next
to a young woman in a pink peignoir. These realists are
capable of anything!" Paul Cezanne appears to have been
another admirer: Apparently he owned a small photograph
of Courbet's painting that he carried around with him iu
his wallet.

116 Portrait ofJo (La Belle lrlandaise), 1866

Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 22 x 26 in. (55.9 x 66 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.63)

115 Woman with a Parrot, 1865-66

Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 51 x 77 in. (129.5 x 195.6 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.57)

GusTAVE CouRBET

Portrait ofJo (La Belle Irlandaise)

This "beautiful Irish woman" is Joanna Hefferman, who
for many years was the model and mistress of the American
painter James McNeill Whistler; among other works, she
posed for his famous painting The White Girl of 1862 (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art), which caused quite a
sensation when it was shown in the Salon des Refuses of
1863. Two years later, in 1865, Gustave Courbet and Whistler painted together at the seaside resort ofTrouville. It was
there thatJo-as she was called by the artists-agreed to sit
for Courbet. Greatly taken by her beauty, Courbet confessed
to a friend, "Among the two thousand women who have
come to my studio, I admired a superb redhead, whose portrait I have begun."
From the original portrait of Jo with a mirror, which Courbet claimed to have painted in a single sitting, he executed
several repetitions. Three other versions are known, in the
National Museum of Stockholm, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and a private collection in Zurich. The chronology of the four pictures is still a subject
for debate, with opinion divided as to whether the Stockholm or Paris version represents Courbet's first conception.
The theme of a woman admiring herself in a mirrorwhich has its origin in traditional representations of Vanity
-had been explored earlier by Courbet in Woman with a
Mirror of 1860 (Basel, Kunstmuseum).
153

GusTAVE LE GRAY

La Grande Vague
Initially trained as a painter in Paris in the 1840s, Gustave
Le Gray had mastered the intricacies of photographic technique and published an important treatise on the subject by
1850. Many of the best photographers of the Second Empire were his students. This fact, together with Le Gray's
large artistic ambitions and his important official commissions, made him the most acclaimed French photographer
of his day.
His most famous pictures, both at the time and today, are
his seascapes of 1856-57, and of these far and away the
great favorite was La Grande Vague, taken in the Mediterranean port of Sete, probably in 1857. The photograph is a
composite, printed from at least two separate negatives, one
for the sky and another, joined at the horizon, of the sea.
The reasons for the photograph's success are not difficult
to discover, for the solidity of the pictorial composition, with
its broad horizontal bands of tone, the instantaneity of the
breaking waves, and the rich cloud formations (that together
would have been impossible in a single exposure) all appealed to current taste for scenes of nature described with
the "truth" of Realism flavored with a touch of Romantic
drama.
154

117 La Grande Vague, ca. 1857

Gustave Le Gray
French, 1820-82
Albumen print from at least two collodion-onglass negatives; 13 1/4 x 165/16 in. (33.6 x 41.4 em.)
Gift of John Goldsmith Phillips, 1976 (1976.646)

GusTAVE CouRBET

The Calm Sea

Painted in Etretat in 1869, this seascape reflects Courbet's
continued fascination with the atmospheric and tonal variations of sea and sky in different weather conditions, seasons,
and times of day. Distinct from the historical or narrative
concerns that inform many of Courbet's landscapes, the seascapes are largely chromatic exercises, which, in their treatment of water and clouds, belong more to the tradition
established by eighteenth-century British watercolorists, and
extended by Turner, than to a native French one. In particular, such works as The Calm Sea show the influence of Whistler, whom Courbet met in 1865. During that late summer
and early fall, Courbet-in a series of "25 seascapes, autumn skies, each one more free and extraordinary than the

last"-had largely developed the pictorial vocabulary he

would use, through the early 1870s, for a host of seascapes
painted on the Atlantic and Channel coasts.
Courbet was usually drawn toward serene, rather than
harsh aspe<;ts of narrative. Here a quiet mood is achieved
through subtle transitions in color as well as the flat surface,
achieved by smoothing the paint on with a palette knife.
Against this nearly monochromatic expanse, the two small
boats serve as incidental visual punctuation rather than focal
points; like the smaller craft on the horizon, they help to
establish a convincing illusion of spatial recession that is enhanced by the gradual diminution of the towering clouds as
the sky approaches the sea.

118 The Calm Sea, 1869

Gustave Courbet
French, 1819-77
Oil on canvas; 23 1/2 x 28% in. (59.7 x 73 em.)
Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929,
H.O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.566)

155

SEVRES TEA-AND-COFFEE SERVICE

This Sevres hard-paste

service, was viewed by
Exposition Universelle
upon the manufacture

porcelain cabaret or tea-and-coffee

the crowds of visitors to the Paris
of 1867. High praise was bestowed
in the exhibition catalogue:

It is needless to state that all the appliances of the Empire are

at the disposal of the Director [of the manufacture]; the aid
of the best artists and chemists is evoked; the artisans are 'the
select' of the country; in a word, 'cost' is of no comideration.
It is just to say, the issues of Sevres have answered the expectations of France.

When the designer Jean Marie Ferdinand Regnier

planned for this cabaret in 1832, the manufacture was under
119 Cabaret
French (Sevres), 1851-60
Designed in 1832 by Jean Marie Ferdinand
Regnier (French, act. 1812-48)
Hard-paste porcelain; greatest D. of stand
19% in. (49.9 em.) Gift of
Helen Boehm, in memory of her husband,
Edward Marshall Boehm, 1969 (69.193.1-11)

the progressive leadership of Alexandre Brongniart, director from 1800 to 184 7, who revolutionized hard-paste porcelain technology and production during a period of great
political and social change. Artists and designers at Sevres
were inspired and challenged by these advances as well as
by the ideas and images summarized at mid-century by the
great exhibitions.
This virtuoso production, made between 1851 and 1860
after Regnier's design, illustrates well the eclecticism that
characterized nineteenth-century high-style taste. Essentially
Islamic in character, the service incorporates painted decoration, bamboo handles, and pierced ornament that derive
from traditional Chinese decoration.

FRANZ XAVER WINTERHALTER

The Empress Eugenie

In 1853, Eugenie de Montijo, daughter of Don Cipriano
Guzman y Porto Carrero, count of Teba and later count of
Montijo, married Napoleon III, emperor of France. An official portrait of the new empress was begun by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the most conspicuous society painter of
the day, soon after the marriage. This painting, dated 1854,
was thus executed while Winterhalter was completing his
large state portrait of the empress, as well as the even grander
group portrait The Empress Eugenie Surrounded by Her Ladies
in Waiting, now in Compiegne. By contrast with those pictures, the present portrait is intimate and, with its garden
setting, informal. The empress is shown in a contemporary
adaptation of a late-eighteenth-century gown: The dress is
cut in a recognizable Second Empire pattern, but its trimmings of ribbon, lace, and ropes of pearls are a blend of
Louis XV and Louis XVI styles. As if the costume were
insufficient reference to the ancien regime, Winterhalter's verdant, pastoral landscape clearly evokes the idyllic settings of
eighteenth-century courtly portraiture.
Eugenie was famous for her adoration Marie Antoinette,
a fascination considered retrograde even by such aristocrats
as Princess Mathilde. Jules and Edmond de Goncourt reported that Mathilde once exclaimed, "This cult for Marie
Antoinette! It is absolutely mad, ridiculous, and indecent!"
But the Goncourt brothers themselves were kinder; after
meeting the empress for the first time, they wrote:
The woman is charming after all. She has eyes that seem to
smile, grace and prettiness of gesture, and indescribable loveliness in the way she passes before you. Neither a queen nor a
princess-an empress of others, not the French, [but rather]
of some romantic [resort] like Baden."

120 The Empress Eugenie (Eugenie de Montijo,

1826-1920, Condesa de Teba), 1854
Franz Xaver Winterhalter
German, 1805(?)-73
Oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 29 in. (92.7 x 73.7 em.)
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Claus von Biilow Gift,
1978 (1978.403)

156

157

MAYER AND PIERSON

La Comtesse de Castiglione
Born of Italian nobility, Virginia Oldoi'ni, comtesse de Castiglione, went to Paris in 1856 to advance the nationalist
cause of her cousin Camillo Cavour. Her diplomatic efforts
and, especially, her seductive beauty made her the envy of
the French court and, before long, mistress to the emperor,
Napoleon III.
Considered at the time to be the most beautiful woman of
the century, the <_:ountess felt she deserved the acclaim and,
elevating vanity to a virtue, she enlisted the aid of numerous photographers in her quest to preserve her beauty for
posterity. The firm of Mayer and Pierson, photographers to
the emperor, served her autoidolatry most imaginatively.
They photographed her in the lavish ball gowns that commemorate her succes de scandale, and in tableaux of her own
devising. Her obsession with herself together with photography's necessary selectivity also led them to focus on certain details of her body or wardrobe, for example, just her
bare ankles and feet, or in this case, her famous shoulders
and eyes.
This photograph, in which the countess holds a picture
frame to her eye, suggests the knowing artifice of photographers and their complicity with their sitter's fantasies. While
the artists frame her within the edges of their photograph,
the countess both masks herself from and frames herself
for their regard. In this way Mayer and Pierson point up
the duplicity and self-consciousness of the posed portrait.
Moreover, her isolated eye in its dark frame mimics the lens
on the big stand camera that faced her. This confusion of
the role of observer and observed reminds us that a good
portrait is not of someone or by someone, but both.

121 La Comtesse de Castiglione, ca. 1860

Mayer and Pierson

French, firm act. ca. 1855-73
Gelatin silver print from collodionon-glass negative;
7% x 5% in. (18.7 x 12.5 em.)
Gift of George Davis, 1948 (48.189)

jEAN BAPTISTE CARPEAUX

Bust of Napoleon III

This late, elegiac work testifies to Carpeaux's prodigious
powers as portraitist. The pomp of the Second Empire is
fully present in the erect carriage of Napoleon III's head,
his proud gaze, and his resplendent hairstyle. Yet the cut of
the bust is extremely simple, so that the spectator's attention is drawn straight to the emperor's eyes, keen and commanding but immensely sad in their setting of wrinkled flesh.
In 1871, after the fall of the Second Empire and during the
emperor's exile at Chislehurst in England, the imperial family requested that Carpeaux begin a portrait. He resumed
his task the following year, but Napoleon was already too ill
to sit for him, and Carpeaux could only finish the composition after his subject's death on January 9, 1873, making
final reference to the features during the lying-in-state. The
date of January 13 on the marble is the day of the model's
completion. In only two years Carpeaux himself would die,
and he already gives here every sign of personal identification with the end of an era in its most tragic aspects.

158

122 Bust of Napoleon III, 1873

Jean Baptiste Carpeaux
French, 1827-7 5
Marble; H. 20V2 in. (52 em.)
Purchase, Ann and George Blumenthal Fund,
Munsey and Fletcher Funds, Funds from
various donors, Agnes Shewan Rizzo Bequest
and Mrs. Peter Oliver Gift, 1974 (1974.297)

159

Page

G
122

ANGERS, PIERRE JEAN DAVID D'

B
BARRE, MELCHIOR RENE

126,127

BATON!, POMPEO GIROLAMO

22

PERCY, SAMUEL

GOYA Y LUCIENTES, FRANCISCO DE

74,

PIRANESI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA

75, 76, 77, 78-79, 80, 81

30, 31

GREUZE, JEAN BAPTISTE

18, 19
98
24, 25
146

PREAULT, AUGUSTE
PRUD'HON, PIERRE PAUL

66

20-21

BLAKE, WILLIAM

104, 106-107

BONHEUR, ROSA

144-145

BONZANIGO, GIUSEPPE MARIA (attrib.)

48, 49

HOUDON, JEAN ANTOINE

26

SIR EDWARD COLEY

120-121

70,

71, 72, 73

29

ROBERT, HUBERT

51
44, 45

ROMNEY, GEORGE

99

ROUBILIAC, LOUIS FRAN(,:OIS

83

ROUSSEAU, PIERRE ETIENNE

142-143, 159

JONES, ROBERT

88

53

JULIEN, PIERRE

52

CLOD ION

103
90-91, 93

RIESENER, JEAN HENRI

INGRES, JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE

c
CANOVA, ANTONIO

RAEBURN, SIR HENRY

REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA

BURNE-JONES,

CARPEAUX, JEAN BAPTISTE

PANNINI, GIOVANNI PAOLO

GANDOLFI, GAETANO

41

BARYE, ANTOINE LOUIS

92, 95

GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS

THEODORE

134-135
96-97

ROWLANDSON, THOMAS

110, Ill

CONSTABLE, JOHN

COROT, JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE

128-129, 130-131, 132-133
COURBET, GUSTAVE

148-149, 150-151,
152, 153, 155

LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS

LE GRAY, GUSTAVE

57
101, 102

DAUBIGNY, CHARLES FRAN(,:OIS

DAUMIER, HONORE

134
140, 141

DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS

58-59, 61, 65
122, 123, 124, 125

MAYER AND PIERSON

MENGS, ANTON RAPHAEL
MILLET, JEAN FRAN(,:OIS
MOREAU, GUSTAVE

s
109

STORR, PAUL

89

STUBBS, GEORGE

154

DELACROIX,EUGENE

LABILLE-GUIARD, ADELAIDE

158

TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD

WILLIAM

23

ll2, ll4-ll5

136, 137, 138-139

147

v
VASSE, LOUIS CLAUDE

FRAGONARD, JEAN HONORE

VIGEE LE BRUN, LOUISE ELISABETH

34-35, 36

NOLLEKENS, JOSEPH

FUSELI, HENRY

38
107

56

96

37,39
FREMIN, JEAN

32-33

PAJOU, AUGUSTIN

55

WINTERHALTER, FRANZ XAVER

157

WYON, BENJAMIN

117

Min-18TH CENTURY

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s

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SEA

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EUROPE: 1812
UNITED KINGDOM
Of

GREAT BRITAI

EMPIRE

A D

IRJ::I.AND

II I IlL\' 1.\

ICOF
SA RDI l A

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POI,.AND

<.,1 ,11<: undct apoleonk

cnnuc I

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R I. A C K

I~

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1750
1751-80
1751
1751-53
1753
1753
1755
1756
1757
1759

t)
I!.Q

European pop.: 140 million

Enryclopidi~

Boucher's Toild of Vrou.s

Tie polo paints ceilings of Wurzburg Residenz
Goldoni 's LA Locaruiina .
British Museum granted charter
Johnson's Dictionary oftM English LAnguagt
Greuze's Brol!rn Eggs
Pannini's Ancimt R~ and MOtkm R~
Ferdinand VI of Spain succeeded by
Charles Ill
Voltaire's Caruiuu
1759
1759-67 Sterne's.Tristram Sharuiy
1760
George II of England succeeded by George Ill
1759
Wedgwood founds pottery works
1761
Rousseau'sjulie, ou LA Nouvtlk Hilo'ist
1762
Elizabeth of Russia succeeded by Peter Ill ,
succeeded in turn by Catha.rine II, the Gr~at
1762
Diderot's Lt Nroro d~ Ra-au
Gluck's Oif~o ~d Euridia
1762
1762-69 Adam designs Syon House, Middlesex,
England
1764
Winck.elmann's G~schicht~ dn Kunst lks
Altmum.s
1765
Nollekens's Bust of LAurroct Sttm~
1766
Goldsmith's Vicar ofWakefuld
1766
Lessing's Laolw6n
Houdon's Dmis Didnot
1773
Louis XV of France succeeded by Louis XVI
1774
Beaumarchais's L~ Barbi~r lk Sivilk
1775
Sheridan's Th~ Rivals
1775

(;1 0 \ 'AN NI PAOI.O PANNINI

Anciem Rome t111t/ Modern Rome

(see Plates 1.21

1757
1759
1760
1763

1765
1767-71
1767-96
1770
1770
1773
1775
(/

PAUL Rt:\'t:llt:

The Blood\ Massacre

(American: 177Ul

Clive becomes first governor of Bengal

(traditional beginning of British Raj)
British defeat French on Plains of Abraham.
take Quebec
leshige. shogun ofJapan. succeeded by
leharu
Treaty of Paris cedes French Canada to
British and ends "French and Indian Wars"
in America
British Parliament passes Stamp Actio tax
American colonies: colonies protest
Cook's first cin:umnavigation
Bougainville travels w Tahiti. Solomon
Islands. Samoan group. New Hebrides
"Boston Massacre"
Cook discovers Bota ny Bay (Australia)
"Boston Tea Party"
American Revolution begins with battles
at Lexington and Concord

CHEST ON C H EST

(American [Philadelphia]: 1770-731

1775-1800
1776- 88. Gibbon's Decli11e a11d Fall oftlte Roma11 Empire
1776
Smith's Wraith ofNatiom
178 1
Kant's K1itik dn rei 11m Vemwift
1782
Reyno lds's Colo11el George K. H. Coussmaker
1782
Lacloss Lfs Liaisons da11gereuses
1784
Clodion's model for A Mo11ummtto
Commemorate the I 11vmtio11 tif the Balloo11
1786
Frederick the Great succeeded by Frederick
William II
1786
Mozart's Noui di Figaro
1787
Schiller's Do11 Carlos (revised)
1787
David's Death of Sonates
1788
Charles Ill of Spain succeeded by Charles I V
1789
Lavoisier's Tmilf ellme~llaire de chimie
French Revolution begins
1789
Blake's So11gs oflwwcmce
1789
Bentham's f11t roductio11to the Pri11ciples of
1789
Morals and Legislation
1790
Burke's Reflections 011/he Rt'"l'olution in France
de Sade'sjusli11e
179 1
179 1
Boswell's Life of Samueljoluuotl
179 1
Hayd n's S_wnplw11_y No. 9-1 in G
("Surprise")
179 1-92 Paine's The Rights of Man
1792
First French Republic proclaimed
French stop Austrian and Prussian invad ers
1792
in Battle of Valmy
1792
Wollstonecraft's Vimii(ation of the Rights of
Women
1793
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette executed
1793-95 Reign of Terror in France under Robespierre
1793
Second Partition of Poland
1793
Louvre becomes a natio nal museum
1795-99 Robes pierre executed, Directory rules in
France

1776
1779
1779
178 1
178 1
1782
1786
1787
1789
1789
1791
1792
1796
1795
1796
1797
1797
1798
1799
1800

American Continental Congress issues

Declaration of Independence
Cook killed in Hawaii
First Kaffir War between Boers and nati,e
Africans
British sun-ender to Americans at Yorktown
Articles of Confederation adopted by
American colonies
Rama I establishes Cha kkri dynasty in Sia m.
with Bangkok as capital
leharu. shogun of j apan. succeeded by le nari
U.S. Constitution drafted
First U.S. congress meets; George Washington
inaugurated as president
Alxl al-Hamid I, sultan of Turkey. succeeded
bySelim III
Vermont. 14th U.S. state
Kentucky. 15th U.S. state
Aga Muhammad becomes shah of Persia.
founds K;uar dynasty
Park explores Niger River
Hung Li, emperor of C hina, succeeded by
Yung-yen (r. as Chia-ch 'ing)
Aga Muhammad of Persia succeed ed by Fath Ali
Adams, 2nd U.S. president
Napoleo n defeats Mamluks in Battle of the
Pyramids
Rosetta Stone found in Egypt
Washington , D.C. becomes U.S. capital

1796
1796
1798
1798
1798
1799
1800

Laplace's Expositio11 du S)'Sieme dumonde

Catherine II of Russia succeeded by Paul I
Stanislas II , Iast king of Poland , dies
Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads
Malthus's A11 Essay o11 the Pri11ciple of Population
Napoleon overthrows Directory. becomes First
Consu l
European pop. (in millions): Italy 17; Spain
I 0; Britain I0

1\lanu~l

(see

KtT,H ~AWA U r .\M t\N.t)

Cuuncsau ll o lclin ~ a Fcm

t);op;oncsc. ~; o. li \1:1)

C lock

Plare 21)

1800-1825
I 80 I
180 I
180 I
1803-04
1804
1804-06
1805
1806
1806
1806-08
1807
1807
1807
1808
1808
1808
1808-14
1808-14
1809
1809
1810
1811
1812
1812
1812-15
1813
1813
1813
1814

1801
1802

Peace of Luneville between Austria and France

ends Holy Roman Empire
Paul I of Russia succeeded by Alexander I
Chateaubriand's A tala
Beethoven's S.vmplum.\' No. J itt E-ftat major
("Eroica")
Napoleon crowned emperor
Canova's Pnst'll.l with till' Ht'ad of Ml'dma
Napoleon defeats Austria and Russia in Battle
of Austerlitz
"Elgin Marbles" brought to England
Francis II renounces title of Holy Roman
Emperor, never restored
Arnim and Brentano's
DI'S K nab1'11 Wwull'l"lwm
Lamb's Talt's jiom Slwkl'spnm
Britain outlaws slave trade
Hegel's Dil' Pltii11ommologit dl's Gtislfs
Goethe's Faust, pan 1
Charles IV of Spain succeeded by Ferdinand VII
Joseph Bonaparte rules Spain
Spanish War of Independence
Goya's Majas o11a Ba/couy
Napoleon a nnexes Papal States
Metternich becomes f(>reign minister of
Austria
Mme. de Stacl's Dt I'Ailnnagtlt'
George Ill, insane; Prince of Wales (future
George IV) becomes regent
Napoleon invades Russia in June. returns
defeated to Paris in December
Byron's Childt' Hamid's Pilg~iiiW!{t'
(;rimm's Kiudn- u11d Hausmii,cltl'/1
Ferdinand VII restored to Spanish throne
Napoleon defeated in Battle of Nations at
Leipzig
Austen's Pridr ami Prt'judiu
Paris falls. Napoleon exiled to Elba

Jefferson, 3rd U.S. president

French crush rebellion in Santo Domingo led
by Toussaint-L'Ouvetme
J>cnia loses Georgia to Russia
1802
1 80:~
U.S. concludes Louisiana Purchase from
France
1803
Ohio. 17th U.S. state
1805
Muhammud Ali proclaimed pasha of Egypt
1806
British reoccupy Cape of Good Hope
1806-07 Russo-Turkish wm
1807
Sclim Ill of Turkey succeeded by Mustafa IV
Fulton powers Clrmwut by steam on Hudson
1807
River
1808
U.S. outlaws imponation of slaves
1808
1\1 ustafa IV, sultan of Turkey. succeeded by
Muhammud II
Madison. 4th U.S. president
1809
1809
Irving's Hi.sttJt")' ofNrw lurk
1811
Venezuela gains independence fmm Spain
1812
Louisiana. 18th U.S. stale
1812
U.S. declares wa1 on Britain ("War of 1812" )
1812
Burckhadt ccliscovers Petra
1814
r.caty of Ghent ends War of 1812
1814
Cape Province becomes British colony
1816
Argentina declares independence from Spain
1817
Monroe. 5th U.S. pesident
1819
Singapore ceded w British East India
<:mnpany
Spain cedes Florida to U.S.
1819

1814
1814
1814
1815

1816
1817-34
H!l8
1818

Louis XVIII assumes throne of France

Congress of Vienna opens
Goya's Till' Third of May, 1808
Napoleon's return ("The Hundred Days")
ends with his defeat in Battle of Waterloo;
exiled to St. Helena
Rossini's II Barbint' di Sit,iglia
Grillparzer's Dt'r Traum : l'itt ubl'll
Schopenhauer's Dit' Wt'lt als Willi' zmd VotJtt'lltmg
Scott's H t'mt of Midlothiau and Till' Bridt' of
Lammtntwor

1819
1820
1820
1820
1821
182 1
1821
1822

ANTON IO CANO\'A

P~~us
(St.~

1825
1825
1825

Prado Museum inaugurated

Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"
George Ill of England succeeded by
George IV
. Lamartine's MMitations poltiqtuo~
Shelley's Ado11ai.s
Weber's Dn Frl'ischillt
Greek war of independence from Turkey
begins
Schubert's S.w nplwn.v No.8 iu B mi11or
("Unfinished")

Alexander I of Russia succeeded by Nicholas I

Decembrist revolt in Russia crushed
Nash remodels Buckingham Palace

wi1h 1he Head uf Medusa

Pla1e Ill)

1819

Bolivar becomes president of Greater

Colombia (incl. Venezuela. Ecuador. Pem)
1820-21 Missouri Compromise concluded
.ol821
Yung-ycn. emperor of China. succeeded by
Min-ning (r. as Tao-kuang)
1821
Mexico gains independence from Spain
1822
Mahmud II suppresses e,olt of Ali Pasha
and defeats Greeks
Brazil gains independence from J>onugal.
1822
Pedro I becomes empero
1822
Ecuador gains independence from Spain
Missouri. 24th U.S. state
1824
Eric Canal between Buffalo and New York
1825
opened
1825
J.Q. Adams, 6th U.S. president

tl

RooM fROM nn: \\'11.1.1.\Ms llm s~.

'(:\nll'rkan( Ridunun<l. \ ' ir)(inia]. lXIII)

I 826
1826

de Vigny's PohnPs antiquPs Pt modn11es

Mendelssohn s overture 10 A Al id,1w1mer N igl11 :,
Dream

1827
1828
1829
182Y

lleine's Buch tier Lieder

Manzoni's I Jmmu.u i sposi
Baedekn's first guide
Turkey rewgnizes l ;reek independence
1 8:~0
Ceoq~c IV suu.:ceded by William I V
1830
Re\"l>lutio n in France. Ch arles X abdicates.
Louis Philippe (Bourbon-Orleans) becomes
king
18:10
Berlioz's S vmplumir F1mla.<tiqw
18:10
Stcndhal's /.r RougP rtlr uoir
IH:IO
Tennvson's Poems. Chirjly i._vriml
IH:H
Belgium separated from the N~theda nd s.
Prince Leopold (Saxe-Coburg-(;otha) chosen
king. r. as Leopold I
Bellini's /.a Smllwmlmla. Nor!IUI
18:~ I
IH31
Hugo's Notre Dame dP Paris
l !n2
Gree ks accept Bavarian. Otto I. as king of
Hellenes
18:12- 38 Wilkins designs a nd erens National l;;\llcry.
London
18.1:l
Ferdinand V II o f Spain succeeded by Isabella II
Push kin 's Ergmi Onegin
18:~3
Balzac's Phr Go riot
IH:I4
18:1[>
Corot 's Hagar in tlu Wildrmt'-''
IH35
Uonizetti's l .ucia di Lr11nmnmoor
de Mussct's Conje..,;,ioll., 11'1111 ruj(mt du sirclr
1836
William I V of England succeeded by Victoria
1 8:~7
1 8:~9
Daguerreotype perfected
1840
Vicwria of Enghmclmanics Prince Albert
(Saxc-(:obu rg-(;otha)
l il-t I
Talbot patents "ca lot ype" (negative)
p hotography
I H-t l
Schurnarm's Symphou_\' S o. I iu U-jlatmajor
("The Sprin)()
Cogol's I>md .\ou/.,
1812

IH:!H

.f .I\I.W. TtRNt:R
Tht Lake of Zug

(se<l'lar,lt\)

1844
1845
1845
1846
1846
1847
1847
1847
1848

Dumas's (perc) Vs trois Mousl[lUtaires

Merimee's Camrm
Wagner's Tamtlu'irtSe
Sand's La Mare au diablr
Delacroix's Tlu Abduction of Rebecca
Charlotte Brome'sja11e Eyre
Emily Brome's Wutltn-i11g Heights
V~rdi's

Macbeth

Revolt in Paris ('june Days"), Louis Philippe

abdicates, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
elected president
Revolution in Vienna, Emperor Ferdinand
1848
abdicates, succeeded by Francis Joseph I
Uprisings in Germany lead to Frankfurt
1848
Parliament and draft co nstitution fo r united
Germany
Switzerland becomes fede ral union
1848
Marx and Engels's Commu nist Manifesto
1848
Mill's Principles of Political E conomy
1848
1848
Dumas's (fils) La Dame aux Camilias
1849- 50 Uickcns's David Coppnfield
Ruskin's S Ptren Lamps of Architecture
184\J
E.B . Browning's Somrets from the Porllrgesr
1850

Webster's .-\uwrinw DidiiJIWil' 1tht J-:,gli.,h

L auguagt

lll29
l iBO

Ill\:>

llBi
lil.\7
IH:IH
18:19-4~

llH!J
IH-tl
1811
1811
18-12
18H
IHE>
IHH

Ill-Hi
IH-17
181H
lllIH

Jackson. 7t h U.S. prcsidcnt

Frend1 invack Algeria
Himshigc's Fifty- Thrtt Stagr., td'tlw Tokaido
1\lelbournc. Aust ralia settled
Texas wi ns independence fnun l\lexKo.
I)('COilll'S republic u nder Sam Houston
Boers kavc Cape in "(;rcat T rek" beyond
Orange River
\ 'an Btrrcn. 8t h U.S. presidenr
lenari. shogun o f.l apan. sucnedcd by Jc~ ushi
Boers defeat Zulus in Battle of Blood Ri,cr
First Opium War between Britain and C hina
Poe's Tlu Fallofthr H111/.\l' 11/ { '.,Jra
Harrison. ~lth U.S. president. dies in office.
succeeded by T yler
'cw Zealand becomes British colom
( :ooper's Tl11 I>rrnlavrr
T rca(\ ol Na nking ends Opium \\'ar. confirms
British possession or Hon!{ Kong
Morse sends lirst tdegraphic message
Florida. 27th. Texas. 2Ht h U. S. states
Polk. lith l'.S. president
U.S. d eclares war on 1\.Jcxico
Mormons round Salt Lake City. l'tah
Cold disco\'crcd in Calil(>mia
Treat\ of ( ;uadalupc Hidalgo cedes Mexican
territory nort h of Rio (;ramie Riv~' r to U.S.

( ; t:O k( ' l . C ,\I.I:H BtS('II.\~1

FurTra1krs l>csn:ndin )( the Missouri

(Amni<an.<a. IIIH )

1848
1849
1849
1850
1850
1850
1850

Nasr ad-Din becomes shah o f Persia

Taylor. 12th U.S. presiderit
Britain annexes Punjab
Fillmore, 13th U.S. president
Calif(>rnia. :~I st U.S. state
Hawthorne's Smr/1'1 Lt'ller
U.S. pop.: 23 million

EuROPE

,.

1871-1914

NON. T il

l:JNITED

GREAT

KI

'6-

SEA

OM

OF

BRITAIN

ATLANT I C
0 C

I~

A
Paris

FRANCE

Lisbon

Jvl

7'

/f
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( .Rt.nll\

" <:ill o l Ml\. Kusscl S;ol(c, 1909

(HJ. I 2:i.HJ:~):

l'urthasc. Fncmls ul thc Anwman Wmg and Kul(t'" Funcl,, \'irgmia C:wolllt'\ (;rll . 111 mcmmy nl
Marl W. C:wunwsnul Mr . ami Mr ~. Frl.'cftori<k
O.uuigtr. lkrn1.1n M(r kin rnd A nun 111111" (;jl
1!175 (1975.!11): r Kogcrs Fund , 1922 (fP IIIG : tl
(;jfl ul .Joe Kindig. Jr.. J~)K (tlH.J:I7):,
nrs K.
.1<'\lll> Fund, 1!13!1 (!l!lJil)

Scoddrolru

Moecowe

u s s

SEA

JJL ACK

p 1 R E

JIHI

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II

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21111

JIJII

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