LENS.- Rustic decor, elegant young people and refined leisure pursuits: the 2015-16 winter exhibition at the
Louvre-Lens celebrates the subject of the Fête galante and the Pastorale. Popularised in the first half of the 18th century, first by Antoine Watteau, then by François Boucher, these themes achieved great success until the French Revolution. First adopted by painters, they spread quickly to other disciplines – in particular the Decorative arts – and became widespread throughout Europe. Thanks to exceptional loans from the Louvre Museum and around twenty prestigious institutions, this exhibition is able to bring together 220 works. The bucolic design of the exhibition combines paintings, graphic arts, furniture, ceramics, tapestries and stage costumes. From the roots to the latest developments, the exhibition traces the fortunes of a delicate, seductive art, which enchanted Europe in the Age of Enlightenment. A tribute to French taste and the joy of living!
On 28 August 1717, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was elected a member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, by submitting a large canvas depicting The Embarkation for Cythera (Paris, Louvre Museum). He was free to choose the subject of the work. For many years, the master had expressed a keen interest in the theme of the pilgrimage and the mythical island of love, as the muse for his courtly reverie. He thus acquired his reputation through a subject that already held a keen interest, to which the members of the Royal Academy gave the name of “feste galante”. For the first time, the genre had been officially recognised.
In the wake of Watteau, the genre of the Fête galante was adopted by his pupil Jean-Baptiste Pater, and by his followers Nicolas Lancret, Bonaventure de Bar and Pierre-Antoine Quillard. Responding to a thirst for freedom and the relaxation of morals during the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans (1715-1723) and further influenced by the contemporary theatre and opera repertory, this theme proclaimed the joy of living, the delights of love, the alchemy of feelings and the need to see and be seen. In turn, other masters suggested their own variations: the pastorales of François Boucher, the melancholy of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and the gentle sentimentality of Lille’s Louis-Joseph Watteau.
The Fête galante and the Pastorale also produced an exceptional glut of work from the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres. Beyond France, in a French-speaking Europe, a large number of artists seized on the same theme, its popularity further boosted by the printing and circulation of their works. The German porcelain manufactories, in particular Meissen, produced a wide range of figurines of lovers dressed in the modern style, denizens of the theatre and shepherds head over heels for pretty shepherdesses. Painters such as Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Cornelis Troost and Norbert Grund wasted no time in taking these fashionable themes as their own. The sculptor Ferdinand Tietz adorned the gardens of German aristocrats and princes with similar figures.
Antoine Watteau did not live to see to what extent his work had won over his peers. Even so, Europe paid him tribute. Madame de Pompadour, for example, was known to intone a popular tune: “Dansez, embrassez qui vous voudrez…” [Dance, kiss anyone you like...]
The exhibition is divided into seven themed rooms, the design of which attempts to restore the contemporary taste for beautiful landscapes, with plays of multi-coloured light and foliage effects on the floor. The first room takes the form of a bubble, conjuring up a forest glade, with shadowy silhouettes dressed in 18th century attire. Visitors will be welcomed by the famous French round “Nous n’irons plus au bois” [We’ll go to the woods no more], as sung by Madame de Pompadour in 1753, here performed by visitors to the Louvre-Lens during the European Heritage Days 2015.
