PORTRAIT MINIATURE DATED 1788, ARISTOCRATY AND AGRICULTURE OR THE TIME OF THE DUCHESSES SHEPHERDESSES
Miniature with a very original composition, dated below on the left 1788. The foreground opens by a stony frame which is painted, in grisaille, a charming bas-relief evoking the peasant pastoralism: a shepherd brings a goat towards a modest sheepfold. Into the frame, pauses a young aristocratic Lady : she wears a straw hat wrongly rustic but decorated with beautiful feathers of ostrich. Her dress in the renaissance taste, is decorated with pearls. behind her, a child look at us with curiosity. On the entablature, in a basket, fruits of the harvest : grapes and apples. In background (and echoing to bas-reliefs): cows graze on lawns, guarded by a cowherd, in front of an elegant castle.A river crosses the compostion towards a village which closes the perspective. This very particular way of being portrayed is good in mind of this period. The ladies of the aristocracy play the farmers, like the Queen in her farm of Trianon in Versailles. But it is also the claiming of new hygienists ideas (the dairy of cleanliness offered by Louis XVI to Marie-Antoinette), the time of models farms where french aristocrats tried new ideas about agriculture.TECHNIQUE:
Watercolor and gouache, under a convex glass
ARSTIST:
SIGNED:
1788
FRAME :
Gilded metal two sides frame, reverse painted to immitate hair work.
PORTRAIT SIZE:
6.5cm
FRAME SIZE:
9.5x7.5cm
DESCRIPTION :
CONDITION:
Perfect original condition
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
PRICE:
1800€