Nicolas LANCRET (Paris, 1690-1743)

The Hurdy-Gurdy Player in Gallant Company in a Park

94 x 74 cm

Oil on canvas
Carved and gilt wood frame with Louis XV period decoration of shells, acanthus leaves, and small flowers

Provenance:
• Collection of Baron Maurice Edmond Charles de Rothschild (1881–1957), Paris
• France, private collection

Bibliography:
• Georges Wildenstein, Lancret: Biography and Critical Catalogue, the Artist’s Work Reproduced in 214 Heliogravures, Paris: Les Beaux-Arts, Éditions d’Études et de Documents chez G. Servant, 1924, reproduced under no. 115, cat. 30
• Christoph Martin Vogtherr et al., French Paintings I: Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoue, Berlin, 2011 (reproduced, cat. no. D4, pp. 746–50)
• Ballot de Savot, Éloge de Mr Lancret, Peintre du Roi, printed by J. Guérrin, 1743

Trained early in artistic practice,“he was placed, to learn the first principles of drawing, with a drawing master, whose name is unknown. […] The desire to extend his knowledge beyond what this master could offer him, and to rise above the condition to which he had been destined, led him to ask his parents to place him with a painter. He passed into the hands of Mr. Dulin.” The beneficial lessons from this history painter enabled Lancret to join the Academy, where he is recorded as a student at the age of 18.

After an initial failure in the Grand Prix of the Academy, the young man naturally abandoned the path of history painting and developed a growing interest in the work of Watteau, six years his senior. Following his example, he in turn joined the studio of Claude Gillot (1673–1722), who passed on to him a taste for the Comédie-Italienne. In 1718, having been received as a member of the Academy, Lancret became a painter of a well-defined genre in which he thrived.

Admiring the old masters, without ever leaving his native Paris region, he studied the masterpieces in the well-stocked royal collections, which gave him an excellent understanding of the Italian styles in vogue. However, although glorified by the Academy, Lancret painted neither religious scenes, nor historical ones, nor military subjects, and only a single mythological painting has come down to us. His work consists essentially of landscapes, meals, concerts, dances, games, rural and pastoral gatherings that form a single inspiration—a great unified series known as the fête galante, the pictorial embodiment of the “century of pleasure,” a reflection of a spirit of artistic freedom.

“Watteau, who was fond of Mr. Lancret in the beginning, once told him that he could only waste his time by staying any longer with a master; that he must take his attempts further, drawing after the master of all masters—nature; that he himself had done so, and had greatly benefited from it.” In this way, Lancret drew his inspiration from nature and the lively scenes it offered, like a great theatrical stage on which he placed his figures—between dream and reality—emanating from an inexhaustible creative force.

The work we are presenting here belongs to the few surviving easel paintings preserved in a very fine state of conservation. In the shade of trees in a park, a couple has stopped near a pond. Seated on a rock, a young man dressed in Italian-style fashion is tuning his hurdy-gurdy. Popular in the 18th century, the hurdy-gurdy accompanies the amiable gatherings of young people in many of Lancret’s paintings (ill. 1). One particular composition draws our attention, as the painter reuses the male figure of the hurdy-gurdy player in a canvas bringing together many characters. It is The Dance before the Tent (Wildenstein no. 151, cat. 50), from the collection of Frederick II of Prussia, today preserved in Potsdam, formerly in the Neues Palais (ill. 2).

The young man gazes at the young woman accompanying him. Her head tilted coquettishly, she sits on the grass and holds an open book delicately between her slender fingers. Dressed in 18th-century fashion, she wears a pink silk robe à la française with a bodice that descends into a stomacher. Over her skirt, an apron made of a piece of white muslin evokes the costumes of shepherdesses. Under Lancret’s brush, the characters wear so-called “fantasy” contemporary costumes—shepherds or actors from the Comédie-Italienne. This is the success and renewal of the fête galante in the 18th century. These pastoral and bucolic scenes are now akin to theatrical pieces, the figures portrayed are anchored in the contemporary era, and some are identifiable, such as “La Camargo.”

The 1730s mark the technical and aesthetic apogee of Nicolas Lancret’s career. In most of these easel paintings, the composition comes alive under a brush rich in material, which transposes color heightened by the use of glazes, allowing the weave of the canvas to be entirely masked.
In this learned and highly unified composition, the foreground opens onto a background with a sky of great depth. The artist skillfully places trees on either side of his figures, their foliage framing the two lateral edges of the composition: like a theater set, the vegetation serves as stage curtains.

The fête galante is an essentially French genre, initiated by Gillot and pursued by Watteau, who treated the subjects “in a manner that was his own, and which nature—of which he was always the worshipper—revealed to him” (J. de Jullienne), and finally sublimated by Lancret and Pater. Lancret was a worldly artist who lived quite “honestly” from his art, “a rather serious man who, little seen in society, occupied himself only with his work” (Mariette). After 53 years of a passionate life entirely devoted to his work, the painter died in Paris, where he was born, had married, and had masterfully led his entire career.

M.O

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