During the 18th century it was common for artists to travel, both to seek inspiration and embrace opportunity. Claude-Joseph Vernet was the most celebrated French view painter of the period. In 1734 he relocated to Rome, where he spent almost 20 years and earned an international reputation. Vernet’s view paintings (or ‘vedute’) were particularly sought after by travellers on the and European rulers. His contrasting pair of paintings, A Landscape at Sunset and A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas, were originally commissioned for the King of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732–1798), whose official court painter at the time was Bernardo Bellotto. Having trained with his uncle Canaletto in Venice, Bellotto went on to enjoy a successful career at the royal courts in Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Warsaw, glorifying the great capitals of Europe through his highly original topographical views.
Room 40
18th-century painting in Europe
Paintings in this room
This intriguing picture is Boilly’s painted imitation of a print after one of his own compositions (possibly now lost). Although Boilly was an expert in trompe l’oeil, it is unlikely that he intended to trick the viewer into thinking they are looking at an actual print because he does not include...
A young child is being taught by an older girl, perhaps in her early teens, who is possibly an elder sister or another relation such as a cousin. Despite the picture’s title, this is a private lesson, probably taking place at home rather than at school. The younger child is most likely a boy, alt...
Pierre-Joseph-Victor de Besenval was an eminent military man and art collector. His association with the circle around Queen Marie Antoinette prompted his flight to his native Switzerland in 1789, during the French Revolution, but he was arrested while fleeing. He avoided the guillotine and was r...
Although the grandest of the many portraits of Madame de Pompadour, this is also the most naturalistic image of her, which avoids the rigid formality or mythological trappings of much court portraiture. The former mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour had become an international celebrity by...
The comte de Vaudreuil was only eighteen when his portrait was painted by Drouais in 1758. He was the son of the governor and commander-general of Saint-Domingue, at that time a French colony on the western end of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is why he points to it on a map.Vaudreuil...
This is the third in Lancret’s series of paintings The Four Times of Day. A gentleman and three ladies are gathered around a tric-trac table in a woodland glade. Tric-trac was a game similar to backgammon. The gentleman and a lady are playing at the table – she has just thrown the dice from her h...
This is the final scene in Lancret’s series of paintings The Four Times of Day. By the silvery light of a spring or summer moon a group of women are bathing together in a woodland pond. One of the women standing in the pond is about to splash another who is lying on the ground, apparently testing...
This is the second painting in Lancret’s series The Four Times of Day. A sculpted cherub (Love) sits on top of a sundial, the shadow of which points to the Roman numerals for 12 inscribed into the stone. The man and two women note the moment on the sundial, and one of the ladies holds her pocket...
In this, the first of Lancret’s Four Times of Day, a priest attends a young lady as she takes her breakfast and gets dressed. The clock records the time as 9.08 am. The young woman, her breast exposed, has turned away from her dressing table to pour hot water into the priest’s teacup. As the pair...
An opulently dressed man with glossy clean-shaven skin and clear blue eyes gazes directly at us with a slight smile on his lips. He wears a rose-gold coloured jacket with exotic gold tassels, covered with a gorgeous teal silk-velvet cloak lined with embroidered gold silk damask. His soft velvet c...
This is one of two paintings originally commissioned as a pair by Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, in June or July 1772. However, concerned that the King was slow to pay, Vernet instead sold the pictures to the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India...
This is one of a pair of seascapes, originally commissioned on behalf of the King of Poland, that the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India) bought from Vernet in 1773.Originally known as ‘Tempête’ (Storm), it depicts a rocky shoreline buffeted by a v...
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat is a signed copy by the artist of a very popular self portrait that she painted in 1782 and which is now in the collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild. The pose is deliberately modelled on Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (also in the National Gallery’s...
This picture is a fine example of Watteau’s work on an intimate scale. The title The Scale of Love (La Gamme d’Amour) comes from a print of it made several years after his death. It may be a reference to the musical scale, to the various stages of flirting and seduction, or to the music which fac...