The Finding of Moses

c. 1655/1660

Sébastien Bourdon

Painter, French, 1616 - 1671

Nine women and girls create a procession leading to a blond, smiling infant lying in a basket being held by a man next to a riverbank that runs across this horizontal landscape painting. The tallest woman, near the center of the retinue, wears a gold, crown-like diadem, and a toga-like gown of golden yellow over a pale, slate-blue, short-sleeved dress. She stands facing our left in profile, and looks toward the baby with dark eyes under dark, arched eyebrows. Her nose is long and straight, her pink lips are closed in a faint smile, and she has a rounded chin and jawline. Her wavy, dark blond hair is braided and pulled back, and she wears a gold earring on the ear we can see. She reaches her right arm, farther from us, straight in front of her with her palm facing the ground. Three women and three girls trail behind her in a row to our right. They wear brightly colored wraps and robes in rose pink, topaz or cobalt blue, plum purple, butter yellow, or ivory white. Most look toward the baby but the girl at the back offers the woman in front of her a tiny bouquet of flowers. Two women to our left of the standing woman stoop to reach out to the basket, held by a muscular, bare-chested, bearded man. Gray, stone blocks of a wall create steps to our left and behind it, a younger, cleanshaven man, also bare-chested, and with shoulder-length, strawberry-blond hair, reaches for his marigold-orange clothing. Trees lining the far riverbank and the brilliant blue sky with steel-gray clouds are reflected in the water’s surface. Across the river to our left, beyond a ruined stone abutment, a man in a red toga, and one in yellow, look on. More people work along the opposite bank. A city built of light gray stone stretches into the deep distance beyond.

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Sébastien Bourdon was one of the twelve founding members of the Royal Academy of Painting and his Finding of Moses embodies the principles of seventeenth-century academic art, which showed the influence of Poussin.

The book of Exodus (2:5) recounts how a Hebrew woman saved her infant son from Pharoah's massacre of Hebrew children by placing him in a basket on the Nile. Pharoah's daughter, while bathing on the banks of the river, found the child, adopted him, and named him Moses. In Bourdon's composition, Pharoah's daughter, dressed in yellow, occupies the central vertical axis of the painting, supported on her left by her ladies in waiting. The figures form a frieze, like antique sculptures, across the foreground plane. They are dressed according to the seventeenth-century concept of ancient costume and placed in a fanciful setting with Egyptian palm trees.

The careful division of the composition into three parallel planes of space recalls the principles of symmetry and order propounded by the Academy. The dignified gestures -- especially that of the princess -- and expressions of the figures tell the story in a way considered appropriate to the event, but the work is also enlivened by vivid color and clarifying light. Bourdon based his composition on earlier works of the same subject by Poussin.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 37

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 119.6 x 172.8 cm (47 1/16 x 68 1/16 in.)
    framed: 161.3 x 209.6 x 8.6 cm (63 1/2 x 82 1/2 x 3 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.65

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly Adriaen Paets II [1657-1712], Rotterdam; possibly (his sale, Rotterdam, 26 April 1713, no. 19).[1] Possibly François Antoine Robit [c. 1752-1815], Paris; (exhibition and sale, including Robit collection, by private contract, Mr. [Michael] Bryan's Gallery, London, 6 November 1801 and following days [exhibition closed 31 May 1802], no. 44).[2] Arthur L. Nicholson, London and Llandaff House, Surrey, by 1937 until at least 1939.[3] (Paul Drey, New York); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] Pierre Rosenberg, Guido Jansen, and Jeroen Giltaij, French Paintings from Dutch Collections, 1600-1800, exh. cat., Musée des beaux-arts, Dijon; Institut nederlandais, Paris; Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Rotterdam, 1992: 21, 35: "Een Stuk, door Sebastiaen Bourdon, zeer excellent, verbeeldende de Vindinge Van Moises in den Nyl, hoog 3 voet 9 duim breed 5 voet 4 duim" ("A piece by Sebastien Bourdon, very excellent, illustrating the Finding of Moses in the Nile, measuring 3 feet, 9 inches high and 5 feet 4 inches wide"). This entry appears in the Paets sale of 26 April 1713; see Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen, met derzelver pryzen, zedert een langen reeks van jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt, benevens een verzameling van lysten van verscheyden nog in wezen zynde cabinetten, 3 vols., Soest : Davaco, 1976 (reprint of the 1752-1770 ed.): 1:156, no. 19. The measurements, given according to the Rhineland Scale, are approximately 118 x 168 centimeters.
[2] "The Finding of Moses by Sébastien Bourdon," sold by the dealer Bryan in London in 1801, in a sale which included works from the Robit collection, may be NGA 1961.9.65, but we have no evidence beyond the artist's name and the title. See Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian, Oxford, 1977: 289-290.
[3] Nicholson lent the painting to the 1937 Paris and 1939 Liège exhibitions.
[4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2172.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1802

  • Possibly [exhibition of ancient and modern paintings], Edward Savage's Columbian Gallery, New York, 1802, no. 4.

1937

  • Chefs d'Oeuvre de l'Art français, Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937, no. 65.

1939

  • Rétrospective d'Art: Peinture, Sculpture, Tapisserie, Gravure, Art Japonais; Grande Saison Internatinale de l'Eau, Liège, 1939, no. 24, repro.

1948

  • A Group of Old Master Paintings, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, 1948, no cat.

  • Possibly California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1948.

1982

  • France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, 1982, no. 11, repro.

2000

  • Sébastien Bourdon: 1616-1671, Pavillon du Musée Fabre, Montpellier; Galerie de l'Ancienne Douane, Strasbourg, 2000-2001, no. 170, repro.

2005

  • The Splendor of Ruins in French Landscape Painting 1630-1800, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2005, no. 9, repro.

Bibliography

1956

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 40, no. 11, repro.

1959

  • Cooke, Hereward Lester. French Paintings of the 16th-18th Centuries in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Four in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 22, color repro.

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 340, repro.

  • Gottesman, Rita Susswein. "New York's First Major Art Show as Reviewed by its First Newspaper Critic in 1802 and 1803." New York Historical Society Quarterly. vol. 43 (July 1959): 289-305, repro.

1964

  • Rosenberg, Pierre. "Quelques tableaux inédits du XVIIe siècle français par Jacques Stella, Charles Mellin, Jean Tassel et Sébastien Bourdon." Art de France 4 (1964): 299, note 14.

  • Thuillier, Jacques, and Albert Châtelet. French Painting from Le Nain to Fragonard. Geneva, 1964: 76, repro. 78.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 19.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 12, repro.

1970

  • Fowle, Geraldine Elizabeth. "The Biblical Paintings of Sébastien Bourdon." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1970: 1:92-97, 2:no. 5.

  • Rosenberg, Pierre, and Thuillier, Jacques. "The Finding of Moses by La Hyre." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 49, no. 2 (1970): 31 n. 12.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 44, repro.

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: no. 423, color repro.

1976

  • Bjurström, Per. French Drawings: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Stockholm, 1976: under no. 173, note 3.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 289-290, fig. 257.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 317, no. 419, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 66, repro.

  • Wright, Christopher. The French Painters of the Seventeenth Century. New York, 1985: pl. 9.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 165, repro.

1995

  • Merot, Alain. French Painting in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven and London, 1995: 139, color repro.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 174, no. 135, color repro.

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: no. 8, 44-48, color repro.

Inscriptions

On stretcher: label, encapsulated and bound with red tape, "CHEFS-D'OEUVRE/L'ART FRANCAIS"

Wikidata ID

Q20177380

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