PORTRAIT MINIATURE DATED 1788, ARISTOCRATY AND AGRICULTURE OR THE TIME OF THE DUCHESSES SHEPHERDESSES

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 :

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.


CONDITION: Perfect original condition

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

PRICE: 1800€