Getty Museum
Dance before a Fountain
Creator
Nicolas LancretFrench Artist · 1690–1743
All works by this person →Nicolas Lancret's early career never indicated his future renown as Paris's best-known practitioner of the *fête galante*. After training as an engraver, he apprenticed to a moderately successful history painter. By 1708 he was studying at the Académie Royale, from which he was expelled for bad behavior. Probably because of the popularity of Jean-Antoine Watteau's elegant new *fêtes galante,*Lancr
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- by 1724
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Sculpture
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In a luxuriant park adorned with a monumental fountain, two couples perform a country dance, accompanied by the music of a rustic bagpipe. On either side, other couples play out the game of love in its various stages of anticipation, entreaty, and reward. Lancret's subject was an invention of the 1700s. Called a *fête galante,* these paintings depicted a pastoral landscape peopled by elegant figures strolling, making music, or attempting to woo their partners. Participants of the *fête galante* seemed uninhibited by the stiff conventions of formal society. Lancret's fluid brushstroke is evident in the shimmering highlights of the costumes and in the play of their opulent colors against the harmony of the landscape background. The painting's relatively large size suggests that it was commissioned by a prominent collector, possibly an aristocratic patron or member of the French royalty.
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