Day 233 - French Neoclassicists

 January 15, 2021

Galleries 609 through 613, it turns out, are undergoing restoration. My trek through the museum in search of the next available gallery brings me through rooms with wonderful, familiar works by Goya, Velazquez, Caravaggio, Van Dyke, and many others. Gallery 614, I find, is devoted to the French neoclassicists. The gallery contains Jacques-Louis David's famous painting of the death of Socrates, along with many portraits of contemporary notables, including a well-known image of Benjamin Franklin and two paintings of Talleyrand.  Houdon busts of Diderot and Voltaire, which used to be in the sculpture galleries, have been moved here, although in my view they should be displayed more prominently; they're really fine.

What are quite prominent are two placards that are saturated with political correctness, maybe even self-righteousness. One reminds us that the neoclassicists idealized the white male body (although I think women's bodies were also pretty idealized), another that the cotton used in the muslin gowns seen in some of the paintings of women was grown on plantations worked by enslaved people. True- but I feel like I'm being hit by a two-by-four. Really, are such reminders absolutely necessary in every room?

I can't say I love any of the works on display here, and I'm not sure why. Their formality? Their high degree of finish? But they do make me think about mass movements - perhaps an inevitable preoccupation nine days after the Capitol invasion. The first is a large (perhaps 8 feet by 6 feet) double-portrait of Antoine Lavoisier and his wife Marie Anne, painted by David in 1788, when Lavoisier was 45. The chemist sits at  a table laden with scientific equipment (vacuum tubes?). He holds a quill pen in his right hand and gazes up at his wife, who, according to the placard, helped him with his experiments. It's depressing to read that Lavoisier was  guillotined in 1794. The placard says that this happened because his position as a tax collector (he used his income to finance his experiments) made him unpopular, and because he had arranged for the removal of gunpowder from the Bastille, an action that aroused suspicion  in the court of mass opinion. Wikipedia points to other explanations: Lavoisier was a nobleman, and he opposed the adulteration of tobacco, thereby incurring the wrath of tobacconists.  Whatever the reason, his execution is a reminder of the incalculable damage that a crazed, misguided, and anti-intellectual mob can do. Ironically, a year and a half later, Lavoisier was posthumously exonerated by the French government.  

The second, much smaller painting  - perhaps 3 feet by 2 feet -  is  by Louis Leopold Bouilly (hitherto unknown  to me) and  is entitled, "The Public Viewing David's 'Coronation ' at the Louvre." Apparently David's monumental painting of Napoleon crowning Josephine was put on display three times at the Louvre between 1808 and 1810, and the public was invited in.  The people assembled in front of the painting in Bouilly's 1810 work appears, on the basis of their relatively simple clothing (no silk, a lot of that muslin) to be pretty middle-class. The painting illustrates the use of art - here, the transformation of art into pop culture -  to bolster political power and authority. 

I note that many of the works in the gallery, including this one,  were given to the Met by the Wrightsmans. So the role of the elite in bringing art and enlightenment to the masses (like me! ) goes on. And thank goodness!