Tag Archives: Liotard

BOOK REVIEW: A Day with Marie Antoinette

A Day with Marie Antoinette

 Hélène Delalex

Photography by Francis Hammond
 HC w/slipcase, 224 pp., 170 illus. 5 ½ × 9 in. (14 × 22.5 cm)
ISBN: 978-2-08-020210-9
£22.50

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Marie Antoinette has certainly cast a spell over succeeding generations and having seen a portrait of her by Liotard in the exhibition of his works at the Royal Academy last year I can understand why.  A daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa and the wife of Louis XVI she was a person who in turn received approbation, admiration, disapproval, hatred and eventually public execution.

This elegant book takes us into her world and helps us gain a clearer picture of her and her lifestyle.  She certainly was, like Diana, Princess of Wales, a queen of fashion and as her apartments at Versailles and in the Petit Trianon reveal a woman of great taste. When one considers the formality of court life where etiquette ruled every aspect of daily life from rising in the morning to retiring to bed one can understand her wish to escape to a less rigid life away from the Palace.

The beautiful photographs, extracts from her letters all aid us to get a closer glimpse of this fascinating subject and this book is the next best thing to actually meeting her in person.

 

editions.flammarion.com

‘Must not be Shook’

A Handful of Dust – Georgian Pastels from the Permanent Collection, The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath BA2, until 18th September 2016

Unknown Artist, eighteenth century A Market Woman with Fruit Pastel on paper, 81.3 x 66cm © The Holburne Museum

Unknown Artist, eighteenth century
A Market Woman with Fruit
Pastel on paper, 81.3 x 66cm
© The Holburne Museum

This year the Museum celebrates its centenary a 100 Years Here with a series of exhibitions.  One is quite delightful, featuring rarely seen 18th century portraits in pastel.  Pastel is a mixture of china clay, plaster and pigment which are rolled into sticks. However it is fragile and can deteriorate quite easily. Indeed Thomas Lawrence wrote on the back of one of his pastels ‘to be kept from the Damp &sun/and must not be shook.’ 

 

Be that as it may the effect of pastel when applied to paper is quite luminous especially for portraits as the examples here amply show.  It became a medium adopted by British artists for about a hundred years from the 1730s. Unlike portraits in oils pastels required no time for drying so Bath painters such as William Hoare and a young Thomas Lawrence often used it when depicting short-term visitors to the city.

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702 – 1789) James Nelthorpe (c. 1718 – 1767), 1738 Pastel on paper, 62 x 50cm © The Holburne Museum

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702 – 1789)
James Nelthorpe (c. 1718 – 1767), 1738
Pastel on paper, 62 x 50cm
© The Holburne Museum

The technique was revived by Impressionist artists as we will discover in another exhibition at the Holburne.

 

http://www.holburne.org

A Glimpse into the 18th Century

Jean-Etienne Liotard, The Sackler Wing of Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1, until 31st January 2016

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Self-portrait Laughing, c. 1770 Oil on canvas, 84 x 74 cm Musee d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, inv. 1893-9 Photo Musee d'art et d'histoire, Geneva. Photography: Bettina Jacot-Descombes

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Self-portrait Laughing, c. 1770
Oil on canvas, 84 x 74 cm
Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, inv. 1893-9
Photo Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva. Photography: Bettina Jacot-Descombes

 

Visitors to this wonderful exhibition will be left in no doubt as to the reasons why the Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) earned such international recognition as a portraitist in his lifetime.  There are more than seventy works by him on view – oil paintings, miniatures, drawings and most importantly his speciality – pastels.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Woman on a Sofa Reading, 1748â??52 Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Photo Gabinetto Fotografico dell'Ex Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Woman on a Sofa Reading, 1748â??52
Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Photo Gabinetto Fotografico dell’Ex Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze

He was a well-travelled man and so as well as images of his own family and himself we meet members of British Society, the French Royal Family, the family of Maria Theresa, Continental Nobility and of course there are also the Orientalist pictures from his time in Constantinople.  These are remarkable works, even more so when one realises that he did not flatter his sitters but painted them as they looked.  It is a view into the real 18th century.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Archduchess Marie-Antoinette of Austria, 1762 Black and red chalk, graphite pencil, watercolour and watercolour glaze on paper, heightened with colour on the verso, 31.1 x 24.9 cm Cabinet d'arts graphiques des Musees d'art et d'histoire, Geneva. On permanent loan from the Gottfried Keller Foundation, inv. 1947-0042 Photo Musee d'art et d'histoire, Geneva. Photography: Bettina Jacot-Descombes

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Archduchess Marie-Antoinette of Austria, 1762
Black and red chalk, graphite pencil, watercolour and watercolour glaze on paper, heightened with colour on the verso, 31.1 x 24.9 cm
Cabinet d’arts graphiques des Musees d’art et d’histoire, Geneva. On permanent loan from the Gottfried Keller Foundation, inv. 1947-0042
Photo Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva. Photography: Bettina Jacot-Descombes

One must not forget either that Liotard also painted some Still Lifes, Genre Scenes and Trompe L’Oeil.  They too as in the case of Still-life: Tea Set, c. 1770-83 (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) also provide a visual aid to the sort of porcelain and other objects used in the 18th century.  This picture is one of two works by him featured in the book accompanying the recent Tea, coffee or chocolate? – The rise of exotic drinks in Paris in the 18th century exhibition at Paris’s Museé Cognacq -Jay.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Still-life: Tea Set, c. 1770â??83 Oil on canvas mounted on board, 37.5 x 51.4 cm The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 84.PA.57 Photo The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Still-life: Tea Set, c. 1770â??83
Oil on canvas mounted on board, 37.5 x 51.4 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 84.PA.57
Photo The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk

Jean-Etienne Liotard, L'Ecriture, 1752 Pastel on six sheets of blue paper, 81 x 107 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Photo (c) SchloB Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. Photography: Edgar Knaack

Jean-Etienne Liotard, L’Ecriture, 1752
Pastel on six sheets of blue paper, 81 x 107 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Photo (c) SchloB Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. Photography: Edgar Knaack