Министерство образования Российской Федерации

Санкт-Петербургский государственный инженерно-экономический университет

Институт туризма и гостиничного хозяйства

Курсовая работа

На тему «The collection of French art in the Hermitage»

по дисциплине «ИЭД»

Выполнила

студентка

5014 гр., 2 курса

Измакова Мария

Проверила

Н.А. Лаковская

2002 год

Introduction.

The Hermitage is one of the greatest museums in the world. Put together throughout two centuries and a half, the Hermitage collections of works of art (over 3,000,000 items) present the development of the world culture and art from the Stone Age to the 20th century. Today the Museum is creating its digital self-portrait to be displayed around the world. The collection of Western European art is regarded as one of the finest in the world, and forms the nucleus of the Hermitage display. It occupies 120 rooms in the four museum buildings, and reflects all the stages in the development of art from the Middle Ages to the present day. The collection includes numerous works by outstanding masters from Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France, England, Germany, and other Western European countries.

The collection of French art in the Hermitage is exceptionally rich and is the finest outside France among the museums of the world. More then forty rooms are used to house the displays of painting, sculpture and various items of applied art.

French Art: 15^th-18^th centuries.

The Hermitage collection of the 15th-18th century French painting is rich and variable. It enables us to trace the development of different styles and schools of that time.

Rooms 272 and 273. 15^th-16^th century art. At the end of the fifteenth century the separate feudal provinces were united into a single French state governed by the king with in the framework of this national state there developed conditions favourable to the growth of culture. In the town of Limoges the production of enamels was revived after a long interval of time, not champleve as in the Middle Ages but painted. The very rich collection in the Hermitage allows us to trace the development of the style of fifteenth and sixteenth century French enamellers. Religious subjects were gradually replaced by mythological ones, medieval convention gave way to a realistic handling of themes, and grisaille (a painting executed entirely in monochrome, in a series of greys) superseded polychrome painting, thus making it possible to convey volume, both of figures and of space. The Renaissance artists turned from objects connected with religious worship to the creation of decorative secular articles, such as dishes, jugs and plates.

Room 273. In a large cabinet there are some faiences by Bernard Palissy (1510-1589), the inventor of a colored, transparent glazing which gave pottery additional beauty and durability. At one time his decorative dishes with relief designs of fish, snakes and crayfish were tremendously popular; this was called Palissy’s rustic pottery. In a case by the window there are exquisite sixteenth century faience vessels made in the small French town of Saint-Porchaire. They have been preserved up to the present day only as separate items, not as part of a set.

Room 274. Sixteenth century French court art; the so-called Fontainebleau school, developed under the significant influence of Italian Mannerism (the Italian Mannerists Primaticcio and Rosso worked in France and painted decorative murals in the royal palace at Fontainebleau). The Venus and Cupid relief was created by one of the leading representatives of the Fontainebleau school, Jean Goujon (1510-1568). The sculptor has skillfully worked into his composition, carved on an oval medallion, the graceful, somewhat elongated figure of the goddess presented in a fanciful pose. The distinctive originality of sixteenth century French art is seen more clearly in portrait painting. Two fine examples of the latter are Portrait of a Man by an unknown painter and Portrait of a Young Man by Pierre Dumoustier.

Room 275-278. Early and mid-17^th century art. During the seventeenth century a number of different trends developed in French art. A painting by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), Portrait of Anne of Austria as Minerva, is a typical example of court art at the time of Louis XIII. Of great importance in seventeenth century French art was the work of the Le Nain brothers, who portrayed peasant life with great sympathy and respect for the common man. The Dairywoman’s Family was painted by Louis (1593-1648), the most talented of the brothers. The figures of the peasants in it are full of dignity, and the compact group stands out boldly against the greyist-silvery expanse of the masterfully painted landscape. Also in this room is A Visit to Grandmother, attributed to Mathieu Le Nain.

Room 279. The Hermitage has a very large and valuable collection of the works of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the founder of Neoclassicism in seventeenth century French painting. In the center of Poussin’s vision stands Man, endowed with reason, will and spiritual beauty. Such are the heroes of his numeous paintings on biblical, mythological and literary themes the sefless Erminia in Tranced and Erminia, the fearless Esther of Esther before Ahasuerus, and Moses, the wise tribal chief in Moses Striking the Rock. Poussin’s rationalism and philosophical outlook are revealed in his delightful Landscape with Polyphemus (1649). Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, is sitting on the top of a rock playing a pipe, with nymphs, satyrs and a ploughman tilling the land, all drinking in this song of nature. In his search for an ideal representation of nature Possin does not paint from life, but builds up his from separate details observed in nature.

Room 280. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) was a leading exponent of the classical landscape. Composed according to the rules of Classicism, Claude’s canvases are saturated with light, which lends them a particular emotional quality. The famous series The Four Time of the Day (Morning, Noon, Evening and Night) reflects the artist’s interest in light, which was something new for French art.

Room 281. late 17^th century art. The official art of France during the golden age of the absolute monarchy served the task of glorifying Louis XIV. Artistic life was regulated by the Academy, at the head of which was the premier peintre to the king, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), and after him Pierre Mignard (1612-1695). Mignard’s work is represented by the monumental Magnanimily of Alexander the Great . After his victory over the Persian emperor Darius, Alexander enters his tent where he encounters the family of the vanquished emperor begging for mercy. With a gesture of the hand the victor grants the captives their lives. The choice of subject was not fortuitous; in the figure of Alexander is glorified le roi soleil, Louis XIV. If Mignard extolled the king in the figure of the great general, the sculptor Francois Girardon (1628-1715) portrayed him as Roman emperor. Girardon’s small bronze model for the unpreserved equestrian statue presents the king in the attire of an ancient Roman soldier and in a wig, such as worn in the seventeenth century.

In room 282 there is a unique collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century Western European silver, for the most part French.

Rooms 290-297 contain items of French applied art, including furniture, Gobilin tapestries, faience, bronze, and porcelain. This collection is known throughout the world on account of its exceptional wealth.

Room 283. this exhibition introduces the visitor to the French portrait painting of the second half of the seventeenth century. The eminent portrait painter Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) is represented by The Portrait of a Scholar.

The two ebony cupboards, decorated with bronze and tortoise-shell and used for keeping medals in, were made in the workshop of Andre-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), a well-known furniture-maker. An original Boulle cupboard can be seen in room 293.

Room 284-289. 18^th century art. This room contains several pieces by one of France’s most eminent artists, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) who, in his search for a realist approach, broke with hidebound academic convention. In his small paintings The Hardships of War and The Recreations of War Watteau portrayed the everyday life of a soldier rather than ostentatious battle scenes as his predecessors had done. The Savoyard with a Marmot (1716), a picture of a simple-hearted young traveling musician, also confirms Watteau’s interest in the simple phenomena of life. The blue expanse of the clear, fresh sky, the buildings of the small town, and the silhouettes of the bare trees make up a landscape in which the glowing colours of autumn are dominant. Watteau became famous as a painter of so-called fetes galantes. An example of this type of painting is the Embarrassing Proposal, painted about 1716. Some member s of fashionable society are amusing themselves chatting in the shade of the gossamery foliage; the casually graceful postures of the young ladies and their admirers convey subtle, almost imperceptible shades of emotion. Exquisite colouring and delicate execution distinguish one of the artist’s masterpieces, a small painting A Capricious Woman, in which the spectator encounters the same world of superficial feelings.

The exhibition in room 285 and 286 presents examples of Rococo court art whose only raison d’etre, according to the art remark of a contemporary, was to please. Venuses, cupids, shepherd boys and shepherd girls are the central figures of the many works of Francois Boucher (1703-1770), a court painter of Louis XV. Boucher’s Pastoral Scene, The Triumph of Venus and The Toilet of Venus, confined in their colours to attractive pinks and blues, are very typical of Rococo art, of which he was a distinguished exponent.

In room 285 particular mention should be made of the work of Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), who executed the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (“Bronze Horseman”) in St Petersburg. His Cupid, Flora and Winter, in which elegance is combined with the true-to-life quality of the figures, are evidence of the sculptor’s faithful adherence to realist traditions. In a large cabinet by the window, among some Sevres porcelains, are the unglazed white porcelain (biscuit) statuettes Cupid, Psyche and Woman Bathing, made from models of Falconet.

Room 286 contains a number of portraits by Jean-Marc Nattier and Louis Tocque, painters who at one time enjoyed considerable popularity. Falconet’s Winter is distinguished from his earlier works its greater severity of style; this is related to the growing influence of Classicism in French art during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century.

Room 287. Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) was a leading representative of the realist movement. His Washerwoman and Grace before Meat (1744) take the onlooker into the sphere of activities and everyday problems and chores of a poor French family. Chardin was an outstanding painter of still life, which was unknown to French aristocratic art as an independent genre. The appeal of the Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts, lies in the austere conception of the composition and the subtle, skilful use of colour.

The center of the room is occupied by the marble statue of the great man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire (1781), created by the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). The eighty-four-year-old Voltaire sat for him in 1778, but the May of that year the great man was dead. With ruthless veracity the hand of the sculptor portrayed the aged, weak body, the hands disfigured by sickness, the crooked spine and toothless mouth. But upon the face of Voltaire, with its high brow, ironic smile and the poignant look of the sharp eyes, is the seal of an immortal intellect and undying energy. The philosopher, seated in an armchair, is dressed in a garment which reminds us of the ancient toga, and upon his head he wears an ancient fillet.

Also of interest are the portrait busts of Diderot and Falconet carved in marble by Marie-Anne Collot (1748-1821). Collot came with her teacher Falconet to Russia, where he took part in the work on the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. It wsa from her model that the head of Peter was made.

Room 288. The painting Paralytic Helped by His Children, one of the most famous canvases by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), was considered to be an affirmation of bourgeois virtue and a protest against the depravity of the aristocracy and the frivolity of Rococo art. Another example of this type of moralizing scene is his painting Widow Visiting the Cure. Greuze’s artistic merit is seen fully in such works as The Spoilt Child, Girl with a Doll and Young Man in a Hat.

Three paintings - The Stolen Kiss, The Farmer’s Children and The Lost Forfeit, or the Captured Kiss - illustrate the work of the fine painter of the second half of the eighteenth century Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806). These are also some paintings by the famous landscape painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789).

Room 289. In the White Room (designed by Briullov, 1838) there are paintings, sculptures and items of applied art from the last thirty years of the eighteenth century. During these years Hubert Robert (1733-1808) enjoyed great popularity; ancient ruins were the favourite theme of his decorative landscapes.