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Indepth Arts News:
"From the Sun King to the Royal Twilight: Painting in Eighteenth-Century France from the Musee de
Picardie, Amiens"
2001-04-24 until 2001-06-17
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Santa Barbara, CA,
USA
The collection of eighteenth-century painting at the Musée de Picardie,
Amiens, is notable for its numerous royal commissions and for a
donation of over two hundred and fifty paintings made in the 1890s by
the Lavalard brothers--two avid collectors of works from the French
classical age. The approximately eighty paintings selected for From the
Sun King to the Royal Twilight will provide a rich overview of French
painting from the end of the reign of Louis XIV to the fall of the French
monarchy in the mid-nineteenth century. The exhibition will highlight the
pictorial variations within the established genres of history and religious
painting, landscape, portraiture, and still life.
Over the course of the
eighteenth century, artists began to receive commissions not only from
the court, but also from the bourgeoisie. This shift is reflected in the
work, which moved away from the official, and at times heavily historical,
subjects so highly prized under the Sun King toward an elegant
intimate, and more imaginative rendering of these same subjects.
In order to place the works in
a historical context, the
exhibition will be organized
chronologically and divided into three sections, introduced by
portraits of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, respectively. It
will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an
introductory essay by Mattieu Pinette, chief curator at the
Musée de Picardie, Amiens, on the revival of collecting
eighteenth-century painting in the nineteenth century, as
exemplified by the Lavalard brothers; and a foreword by Pierre
Rosenberg, director at the Musée du Louvre. Additional guest
authors will explore questions of attribution and iconography
and examine the shift in patronage--translated into a change in
taste--from the court to the bourgeoisie. The essays will also place the works within a social and historical
context by examining the economic and political circumstances that helped formulate royal taste. An
exploration of the major genres--still life, landscape, and mythological subjects--that developed during the
reign of Louis XIV through the fall of the French monarchy will provide readers with an understanding of
the social undercurrents of the eighteenth century that shaped artistic subjects and patronage.
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