Five Favorites of French Neoclassical Art

One show features nearly 90 drawings from what was an amazingly turbulent period in French history, while the other encompasses 25 paintings from the time. Both shows include works by some of the most revered artists of the day—works that draw from ancient Greek and Roman influences and reflect the upheaval of then-contemporary France. 

We asked five curators to share their top picks from this illustrious selection.

An Echo of Grief

I’ve always been impressed by the skill with which Neoclassical artists brought ancient stories to life for their contemporary audiences. Painters such as Charles Meynier brilliantly transformed words into vivid and emotional images that address universal themes including love, heroism, and, in this case, grief.

This dramatic scene depicts events from the aftermath of the Trojan War, as told by ancient writers such as Ovid. Hecuba, wife of the Trojan king Priam, discovers the body of her murdered son Polydorus as she collects water on a beach. Restrained by her companions at the right of the composition, she reaches toward him, her grief echoed by her billowing veil and by the turbulent sea and stormy sky behind her. The theatrically positioned arms and hands of each figure enhance the shock and grief expressed by their faces.

The painting was executed at the beginning of Meynier’s career, during his stay in Italy as a recipient of the prestigious Prix de Rome fellowship for artists, which he had won in 1789. However, the tumultuous events of the French Revolution and consequent counter-revolutionary violence in Rome meant that he spent only three years there, rather than the usual five. Polydorus’s body recalls the nude studies, made from posed models, that were essential elements of academic art training in the 18th century. In this case, Meynier drew upon an earlier painting by François-Xavier Fabre, his friend and companion in Italy.

Meynier’s painting speaks to the close community of French artists in Italy and the transmission of the Neoclassical style through emulation.  

—Emerson Bowyer, Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe

A Portrait of a Fellow Painter

I regularly gravitate to stories with strong and intriguing female characters, whether in books, film, or television, and my work is no exception. It should come as no surprise, then, that I am fascinated by this portrait of the painter Léon Pallière (1787–1820) by the little-known artist Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818).

To date, there are no works in the Art Institute’s permanent collection by Capet, so I am excited to share her work and life story with you, our members, for the first time.

Very little is known about Capet’s childhood, save for the fact that she was born to humble beginnings in Lyon. It has been suggested that both of her parents were servants, so the fact that she had any exposure to the arts, much less encouragement in pursuing them, is unusual. In 1781 she moved to Paris to study with the celebrated French painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803), who had championed the education of young women artists. (Labille-Guiard’s Portrait of a Man, also from The Horvitz Collection, is currently on view in Gallery 218.)

The two women quickly formed a close bond and in fact lived together for an extended period, first in a studio apartment at the Louvre and continuing even after Labille-Guiard married the artist François André Vincent in 1800. Capet assisted with studio and household work and frequently modeled for both artists. The women’s relationship was akin to family, as Capet took to calling Labille-Guiard and Vincent mother and father and cared for them until their deaths, in 1808 and 1816, respectively. Capet herself died only two years later.  

Today Capet is remembered primarily as a skilled miniaturist and portraitist. Her skillful rendering of Pallière, who had been her colleague, is a reminder that portraiture was one of the specialties of women artists, largely because they were not permitted to participate in the academic study of the nude male form that served as the foundation for history painting. However with Labille-Guiard’s support, Capet eventually did turn to oil and history painting. Her 1808 canvas Studio Scene (Adélaïde Labille-Guiard portrays Joseph-Marie Vien), now in the collection of the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, is a culmination of all that she learned and a fitting tribute to a lifelong friendship.

—Emily Ziemba, director of curatorial administration and research curator, Prints and Drawings

An Almost Tangible Presence

Unlike the rest of the works in these exhibitions—which largely feature human figures, many in dramatic scenes—this drawing is a design for a decorative and utilitarian piece of tableware. And yet, I’d argue that it’s as powerful in its own way as any of the exhibition’s often moralizing narrative subjects.

Emblematic of the emerging Neoclassical style, this drawing of a soup tureen was part of a vast number of designs featuring dinner services, candelabra, and furniture made by sculptor, designer, draftsman, and printmaker Jean Guillaume Moitte for King Louis XVI’s court goldsmith, Henri Auguste (1759–1816). While I wouldn’t want to live with such a grand object, there’s a modernity to Moitte’s designs that is enormously appealing. Inspired by the motifs and furnishings of ancient Greece and Rome, they have the gravity of Classical antiquity with a bit of the whimsy of late French Rococo while also being stylistically ahead of their time, prefiguring the austere Directory style as well as the better-known Empire style. With the abolition of the monarchy and Louis’s execution in 1792, most of these designs were never realized. The drawings are all that remain.

This particular example is large—essentially to scale—and has a presence almost as palpable as the actual silver object that was intended to be made from it. The imposing and architectonic tureen is symmetrical and harmonious, featuring Neoclassical elements such as the lion’s-head handles, fluted pilasters, claw feet, and intertwined snakes at the base. While largely a contour drawing, Moitte used wash (mostly black and gray, with a dash of pink) to suggest areas of intricately worked detail, which were intended to contrast with the tureen’s highly polished gilt surface.

Moitte was a well-regarded sculptor, trained under the pre-revolutionary monarchy, although he also flourished under the revolutionary government and again under Napoleon. He clearly knew how to survive in dangerous times. Much of his early work was ephemeral or destroyed, but his drawings for decorative objects (as many as a thousand) were preserved. They represent his greatest legacy, not simply as an inspired designer, but as a profoundly accomplished draftsman.

—Kevin Salatino, Chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator, Prints and Drawings

A Tragic Goodbye

With a background in Classics, I’m always drawn to subjects from Greek and Roman literature. And while I acknowledge my bias, I do think this large pastel depicting Oedipus embracing his daughter Antigone is one of the most dramatic and captivating works in these exhibitions.

In Greek mythology, Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes, unknowingly kills his father and unwittingly enters an incestuous marriage with his mother. When he realizes what he had done, he blinds himself before being banished from the city of Thebes. Guided by Antigone, Oedipus arrives as an exile in Colonus, a village just outside of Athens, where he soon realizes he will die. The violent storm we see gathering behind the figures is presented in Sophocles’s play as a sign from Zeus that Oedipus’s death is imminent. 

Employing black and white chalks on blue paper, the history painter and lithographer Mauzaisse shows us Oedipus as a tragic hero taking his final leave from his distraught daughter. The artist skillfully exploited his chosen medium, using the contrast between the vivid blue of the paper and the black and white chalks to amplify the emotion. He presents Oedipus as a monumental figure—quite literally, since he is considerably and unnaturally larger than Antigone—and an icon of noble acceptance in the face of unimaginable adversity, so eloquently symbolized by the tempest closing in on him. 

The subject of Oedipus at Colonus became very popular after the French Revolution, probably because of the topical themes of turmoil, crime, punishment, and exile it touches upon. A new play about the story was written and staged in Paris in 1797, inspiring a number of artists in the following years to visualize Oedipus’s last moments in their works. Seemingly unrelated to any known paintings, however, Mauzaisse created this drawing as an independent, finished work of art.

—Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings

A Protective Embrace

The first time I saw this artwork by Pauline Auzou (1775–1835), it immediately caught my eye. Not only is it skillfully executed, it is the only work by a woman in our paintings exhibition. I am deeply interested in the work of early modern women artists, and one of my goals is to contribute to current research shedding light on the many women who have long been neglected in art historical scholarship.

Although not a household name today, Auzou stands out among female artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. She regularly executed not only portraits and genre scenes but also history paintings, which required knowledge of the classical past and the nude human form. This sets her apart from many other women artists of her time, who were often relegated to subjects such as still life or flower painting. Auzou also ran a studio for women artists for 20 years and was often commissioned to portray contemporary events, including the marriage of Archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon Bonaparte.

In Daria or Maternal Fear, Auzou depicted a young mother kneeling before a broken sapling, grasping her son with both fear and astonishment. At lower left a small tree has been tied with a ribbon, a possible reference to a Livonian custom related to the birth of a child. Livonia corresponds to modern Lithuania and Estonia, where Daria was a common name. When it was displayed at the French Salon in 1814, this composition was well-received for its sentimentality and technical skill as well as its subject matter, which may be reflective of Orientalism (the contemporary artistic interest in non-European customs, costumes, and physiognomies) as well as the burgeoning of ethnography as a discipline.

—Andrea Morgan, research associate, Painting and Sculpture of Europe 

Look for these curator picks in French Neoclassical Paintings from The Horvitz Collection, in the Catherine Barker Hickox Gallery (223), and Revolution to Restoration: French Drawings from The Horvitz Collection, in the Jean and Steven Goldman Galleries (124–27).

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