Toulouse, France.- The Musée des Augustins is proud to present “Small Theaters of the Intimate: French genre painting between Revolution and Restoration” on view at the museum until January 22nd 2012. The history of French genre painting from the end of the Ancien Regime to the Restoration of the monarchy reflected changing tastes, fashions and especially foreign influences during this very turbulent period in French history. The story of French painting between the Revolution and the Restoration is one of noise and fury that led gradually from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. But, in actual fact, and despite the upheavals of the time, the majority of paintings exhibited in the Salons were genre paintings, as if the humble activities of women, the elderly and children in the home better illustrated the times than the ancient tragedies and costumes.
The greatest artists of the day, such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Fragonard, Marguerite Gerard, Louis-Léopold Boilly and Martin Drolling used their talents in a sentimental, humorous, colorful and uplifting portrayal of real life, or at least the image of daily life that they wanted to give. From the first hours of the Revolution, painters had to show that they stood apart from the old tastes and styles predominant under the Old Regime, and turned to other sources of inspiration. They also had to reflect the unprecedented changes that French society was going through, fashion, scientific advancements and a changing clientele meant that the artists had to keep on their toes and try to predict how fashions would change. In the 1770s, artists like Marguerite Gérard and Jean Baptiste Mallet, produced risque scenes in the Dutch vein, but by the time Napoleon was defeated and the monarchy restored, the fashion had changed dramatically, and the same painters were producing pious religious scenes.
Throughout the eighteenth century Dutch paintings from the Golden Age (seventeenth) were achieving astronomical sale prices in Paris. Painters of genre scenes as Gerard Dou or Netscher Mieris were then just as well known as Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Vermeer. Under their influence, many French painters of the late eighteenth century imitated their techniques, Jean-Honoré Fragonard was extremely successful with his paintings in this style during the during the 1770s, his paintings of aristocrats at play selling well to a clientele that would all but disappear when the revolution came. After the revolution, he felt it wisest to leave Paris, and although he never again reached the heights of fame and popularity, his pupil and sister-in-law Marguerite Gerard, thrived by producing similar scenes that featured middle or working class families.
The sixty paintings featured in the exhibition have been assembled exclusively from private and public collections within France. The Louvre Museum, the National Museum of the Castle Versailles, the museums of the Ville de Paris, Banque de France and major museums oin the provinces has been particularly generous.
Since 1793, the Augustins museum (the Musée des Beaux-arts de la ville de Toulouse), has been located at the historical heart of the city in a remarkable former convent building characteristic of the southern gothic style. The museum is home to collections of paintings and sculptures dating from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. The variety and richness of the works highlight the most important movements in the history of western art. Particularly rich in sculptures, the Augustins museum owns a unique collection of romanesque sculptures and has an equally superb ensemble of masterpieces representing southern gothic sculpture as well as numerous 19th century sculptures, representative of the vitality of artistic life in Toulouse. The painting collections, on a par with the great museums of France, expanded around an initial core of paintings that consisted of works confiscated during the revolution and those sent by the state, and has been enriched ever since. Alongside the masterpieces of the French and European schools of the 16th to the 18th centuries (Perugino, Guerchin, Rubens, Van Dyck, Tournier, Jouvenet, Bourdon, etc.), the museum displays a superb 19th century collection: Hennequin, Delacroix, Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Laurens, Constant. The works are presented in the sumptuous setting of the church and the chapter houses of the old Augustins convent. They can be admired also in a wing, built at the end of the 19th century based on the drawings of the famous architect Viollet-Le-Duc. This wing is composed of a monumental staircase and vast rooms with overhead lighting. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.augustins.org