The exhibition “Rubens, Poussin and the Painters of the 17th Century” at the Musée Jacquemart-André has a good story to tell and illustrates it well, but you would never …
The exhibition “Rubens, Poussin and the Painters of the 17th Century” at the Musée Jacquemart-André has a good story to tell and illustrates it well, but you would never know it from the title, which, once again, names names of famous painters designed to attract large numbers of visitors (it obviously works). But at least this time, the museum delivers more than just one work by the promised painters, unlike some of its previous shows.
The story being told here is about how currents of artistic inspiration flowed through Europe in the 17th century, and particularly about how French painters, at first strongly influenced by Flemish artists who traveled to France to fill royal commissions, began to develop their own style of French Classicism.
One of those Flemish painters working in France, Peter Paul Rubens, was hired by Marie de’ Medici to decorate her Luxembourg Palace (now the French Senate in the Luxembourg Garden). His work, itself strongly influenced by the Italian painters whose work he had come to know during a long stay in Italy, takes pride of place at the beginning of the show, notably with “Allegory of Good Government” (c. 1625), probably painted for Marie’s apartment in the Luxembourg Palace and crowning Marie, considered an illegitimate ruler by the French, with all the attributes of a good head of state. A
powerful portrait of her by Anthony Van Dyck (1632), painted when she was living in Antwerp after being exiled for the second time by her son, Louis XIII, offers an interesting contrast to the splendor of the painting by Rubens. In the Van Dyck portrait, the stout Marie, dressed in black, is seated with her royal crown sitting on a table beside her rather than on her head.In the background, the sun is setting on Antwerp, as it was on her royal career.
Several works in this and following rooms show just how strong the influence of the Flemish realism was on French artists. Many of the Flemish artists who came to Paris to fill commissions from Henri IV after peace was restored in France set up their studios in Saint Germain des Prés, then outside the city walls, to avoid commercial restrictions imposed on artists within the city limits. They were joined in their suburb by provincial French artists, and the mixing of influences began.
Hanging on facing walls, for example are Frans Snyders’ “Dog Defending its Prey” (c. 1635), which shows a dog that has broken away from its chain standing over a bloody beef head and snarling viciously at a rival canine. A very similar scene by a French painter, Laurent de La Hyre, “Two Dogs in a Landscape” (1632) clearly shows Snyders’ influence, with one difference: La Hyre has introduced a classical column into the background of his picture.
A few brilliant paintings by the Frères Le Nain show how their style of genre painting was influenced by but differed from that of the Flemish artists, with the French artists introducing a more poetic reserve and a certain meditative grace absent from Flemish genre scenes, seen notably in “The Concert” (c. 1650; pictured above).
Other comparisons demonstrate how La Hyre and Eustache Le Sueur, who are credited with developing French Classicism, were influenced by the South as well as the North, especially by fellow Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, known for the restraint and order of his Classical style, who worked in most of his career in Rome, but spent a couple of years at the French court at the demand of Richelieu. Nearly an entire room is devoted to Poussin, moving from an example (“Mercury, Herse and Aglaure,” c. 1624) of the erotically tinged paintings he made to earn his living in his early days in Rome to works inspired by Antiquity and designed to inspire philosophical and moral reflection in the viewer, exemplified by “Midas at the Source of the Pactole River” (c. 1626).
Don’t miss the marvelous little painting by Claude Lorrain in this room: “Landscape with the Port of Santa Marinella” (1639), in which the dazzling light from the sky is reflected on all the figures in the painting. Lorrain, along with Poussin, was one of the painters who inspired Turner, as we saw in last year’s show on the latter at the Grand Palais. These lighting effects are completely absent from another Lorrain picture hanging alongside it, painted earlier in his career.
The exhibition goes on to show how, with the flourishing of the arts in France and its rising international influence under Louis XIV, the Northern artists who flocked to Paris began to move away from the Rubenese Baroque and convert to the sobriety of the French Classical style. They, in turn, carried Classicism back to Northern Europe, through such painters as Bertholet Flémal and Gérard de Lairesse. And so the river of artistic fashions flowed on.
Musée Jacquemart-André: 158, boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris. Métro: Saint-Augustin, Miromesnil or Saint-Philippe du Roule. RER: Charles de Gaulle-Étoile. Tel.: 01 45 62 11 59. Open daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission: €10. Through January 24, 2011. www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com. An iPhone tour of the show can be downloaded on the show’s mini-site.
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