Nicolas Lancret

French, 1690 - 1743

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French painter (1690-1743)

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Seven elegantly dressed men and women sit and stand together in a landscape while being attended to by more men, who also tend to four dogs and four horses, in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale skin with flushed cheeks and delicate features. They gather in front of a grove of towering trees, the canopies of which reach the top edge of the painting and fill much of the sky in the top half of the composition. In front of the trees, one woman sits and one stands at the center of the painting. To our left of center, the seated woman wears a muted, lemon-yellow dress trimmed with white. The bodice has a high neck and a narrow waist, and her outer yellow jacket is unbuttoned. She wears a small black tricorn hat perched on gray curls. She sits with her body facing us, but she turns to look at a man to our left with big eyes. She reaches out with one hand to take a teacup topped with froth from a tray that man holds. He sits and leans his torso toward the woman, looking at her in profile. His coat is sapphire blue edged with gold. His and the other men’s hair curl around their ears and are tied at the nape of their necks with black ribbons. The other woman stands next to the first, to our right. Her hoop skirt and jacket are scarlet red over a shimmering, ice-blue bodice. Her body angles to our right, and she looks off in that direction in profile. Her brown hair is pulled up under a black cap topped with a red feather. She holds her skirts with her left hand, to our right. A man standing slightly behind her and to our left holds out a loose fist, and she rests her other hand on his. This man wears a fawn-brown coat over an ultramarine-blue waistcoat. He pins a black, gold-edged hat under one arm and looks at the back of the woman’s head. Two more people sit on the ground in front of these couples. A person to our left sitting facing away from us has brown hair and wears a blue jacket. One hand is planted on the hip and the other holds a black hat by the ground. The other is a man who faces us as he leans on one elbow. He wears a dark yellow jacket, and a black hat hides his eyes. He holds out a piece of food to the four dogs in the lower right corner of the painting. One dog strains forward to smell it. Another sniffs the ground, one looks at us, and the fourth looks back at the man holding the dogs’ leashes. Three men tend to three brown horses just beyond this. To our left, a man wearing burnt orange holds a bowl of peach-colored fruit near the left-most couple. A man behind him kneels and pours liquid from a pouch into a decanter. Two baskets are on the ground next to that man and another basket is slung over the back of a gray horse behind him. Grass and leafy vegetation grows to either side of the grouping. Green hills roll back to distant, hazy blue mountains along the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. Puffy white and gray clouds swirl in the powder-blue sky above.
Nicolas Lancret, Picnic after the Hunt, probably c. 1735/1740, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.22

Picnic after the Hunt

Nicolas Lancret · probably c. 1735/1740 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.2.22

Twenty-one men in long waistcoats and women in elegantly trimmed gowns gather and dance within a verdant landscape in this horizontal painting. The men wear jackets and breeches in ginger brown, pale pink, or spruce blue. The women’s gowns have full sleeves, tight-fitting bodices, and full skirts in shades of bronze, teal blue, butterscotch gold, or rich pink edged with ribbons and lace. Some of them wear floral wreaths or ribbons in their upswept hair. Groups gather around a woman and man who dance together to our left in the scene. Some in the group of onlookers to our left hold musical instruments, including a violin and a pipe. Another group is nestled among trees just beyond the dancers, at the center of the painting, and more sit and stand to our right. The dancing woman wears a gleaming, ice-blue gown with rows of flowers in muted pink, blue, and gold down the full skirt and around the bottom hem, which falls short of her thin ankles. More garlands cross her chest and shoulders, and flowers are tucked into her dark gray hair. She faces us with her head turned to our right as she looks off in that direction with dark eyes under curving brows. She has a delicate nose, rosy, round cheeks, and pink lips. She holds her arms spread wide with the thumb touching the index finger of each hand. The man with whom she dances wears a coral-red tunic and breeches with sleeves decorated with pale pink and blue ribbons. The brim of his brown hat is turned up. His body faces us but he turns his head to look at the woman, his lips parted. The man and woman each have one gracefully pointed foot raised. The dancers and groups are enclosed within a park-like setting with tall trees to either side, and a screen of trees across the back of the space. The trees have slender trunks and canopies in shades of pine, sage, and moss green. Near the back middle of the scene, a stone column topped by a human head wearing a wreath of laurel leaves rises above the central group. A fountain with a vertical jet of water is tucked into the shadows within a grove of trees along the right edge of the painting. The water falls into a pool in the lower right corner.
Nicolas Lancret, La Camargo Dancing, c. 1730, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.89

La Camargo Dancing

Nicolas Lancret · c. 1730 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.89

Nicolas Lancret, Two Elegant Women in Polish Dress, c. 1723, red, black, and white chalk on light brown paper, Gift of Myron A. Hofer in memory of his mother, Jane Arms Hofer, 1944.9.1

Two Elegant Women in Polish Dress

Nicolas Lancret · c. 1723 · red, black, and white chalk on light brown paper ·  Accession ID  1944.9.1

Nicolas Lancret, Lady Seated on a See-Saw, red chalk on laid paper, Gift of the Christian Humann Foundation, 1996.128.24

Lady Seated on a See-Saw

Nicolas Lancret · · red chalk on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1996.128.24

Nicolas Lancret, Two Seated Ladies, red chalk on laid paper, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1963.15.16

Two Seated Ladies

Nicolas Lancret · · red chalk on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1963.15.16

Nicolas Lancret, A Young Woman Looking in a Mirror, 1742/1743, red chalk with black and white chalk on oatmeal paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2002.126.1

A Young Woman Looking in a Mirror

Nicolas Lancret · 1742/1743 · red chalk with black and white chalk on oatmeal paper ·  Accession ID  2002.126.1

Bibliography

1924

  • Wildenstein, Georges. Lancret. Paris, 1924.

1991

  • Holmes, Mary Tavener. Nicolas Lancret, 1690-1743. Edited by Joseph Focarino. Exh. cat. Frick Collection, New York; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1991-1992. New York, 1991.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: 278-279.