Louvre

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French painting section

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Paris-Louvre-French painting section-Big format paintings

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Pestiferes de Jaffa

To finish about French painting let’s now take a look in the three rooms, first floor, Denon wing, in halls 75, 76, 77 “large format French paintings”. Immense format paintings from end 18th and beginning 19th are proposed. Try to move back the farthest possible to be impressed by their size.
See " Les Pestiférés de Jaffa" by Antoine-Jean, baron GROS, painted in a few months, considered as one of the largest and best-known work of the Louvre. It radiates an epic inspiration and colour that will prevail later in French painting. Also "Murat, roi de Naples" and the famous " Radeau de la Meduse" by GERICAULT .

Radeau de la Meduse

Presented at the salon of 1819 it is often considered as the first expression ofFrench pictorial romantism. The impetuosity and dramatic intensity shown in the description of this “faits-divers”(the survival of 15 shipwrecked of a fregate that left for Senegal on July 1816, make it one of the key master pieces of the Louvre collection.  Extraordinary moments, rendered by the exhausted bodies rising progressively from the left to the right, when sighting the saviours ship. The public was deeply shocked by the realism of the bodies and the greenish colours, but Gericault couldn’t care less. Triumph of colour, movement and passion: a revolution. Which oil canvas of the 60 exhibited in the Louvre of this genial artist will be the best illustration? Who am I talking of? Eugene DELACROIX, of course. Maybe you will prefer the “Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders” to the famous “Liberté Guidant le peuple”? 

But it would be almost criminal to neglect a capital aspect of the art of this sumptuous colourist if I wouldn’t mention “Femmes d’Alger”, "Dante et Virgile”, "Le Massacre de Scio ", where light

Massacre de Scio

plays such an important part. My favourite is " La Mort de Sardanapale” presented at the Salon in 1827, a barbaric feast, inspired by a poem of Lord Byron where the poet saw on the canvas his own romantism. It’s an exotic and erotic challenge to classic painting. Tumultuous work, quintessence of romantics, it creates a scandal.  Prominent writers defend the work: Theophile Gautier writes: “We cannot not follow indefinitely the David school. Others describe it as a convulsive work, a sadistic fantasy, “ a reformed way of painting”, anarchy, throwing the spectator into confusion since the “artistic rules” are not respected anymore. A certain Ludovic Vitet (liberal press) worries that this kind of painting could triumph on the “faithful of the church”’.

Mort de Sardanapale

Delacroix is art for art. He wished being a poet, but painting replaced the pencil. I advise you a very good book, I don’t know if there is an English translation of it:  “Delacroix” by Stéphane Guegan (Flammarion). Il He takes us with him to the core of the painter’s atelier. You will find there painting, of course, but also rough material, sentiments , anguishes and passions.
Just a brief description and anecdote about the “Mort de Sardanapale”. It pictures the end of the Assyrian king who slaughtered all his wives and horses by cutting their throat. After that he committed suicide (what a moral person! !) which is evoked here with a fantastic violence and voluptuousness, thanks to the red, golden, brown and black tones and the maelstrom of curves and roughness who literally take the painting away!

Grande Odalisque

In the same halls,” La Grande Odalisque” by INGRES. Ockman C., in  “Ingres's Eroticised Body,states that  (begin of quote): Ingres's painting reduces the female to a passive object and she is disturbed that, at best, it places the female body in the same sphere as deformity. She continues on to suggest that even though the painting smacks of masculinity, the sensual aspects of it can be reclaimed and reconstituted by using the "fluidity of form to defy boundaries instead of the formlessness that has always been associated witht he work." “ (end of quote).

Sacre de Napoleon

 Ingres looks here for perfection ( he was obsessed by Raphael). An expert, looking very closely, noticed the presence of three supplementary vertebras, which adds more lasciviousness to the pose.  It's not a back, it's a grand piano! We are beyond the real!
Other major works in these three galleries. ". From DAVID " Madame Recamier" , " Serment des Horaces" and the very, very, famous "Sacre de Napoleon".

Bibliography

The Louvre, Seven Faces of a Museum; The Louvre (Collection Guides Gallimard), Jean Francois Millet: His Life and Letters by Julia Mary Cartwright Ady (Published 1971), Drawn into the Light: Jean Francois Millet, by Alexandra R. Murphy (Published 1999), Ingres then and now (Visions: Critical Studies in the History and Theory of Art), by Adrian Rifkin, " Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, by Robert Rosenblum (From Abrams' Masters of Art series), Eugene Delacroix 1798-1863, The Prince of Romanticism, by Gilles Neret,  Delacroix, by Barthelmy Jobert.: the definitive Delacroix monograph, from the world's foremost expert on his art, “Ingres's Eroticised”, by Body Ockman C.,  “Delacroix” by Stéphane Guegan (Flammarion)