Past Exhibition

The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard

Fourteen men, women, and children focus their attention on a man fanning out a deck of cards in a town street in the right half of this horizontal painting. More men and women stand in small groups or walk in the left half. The women wear bonnets and long dresses and cloaks. The men wear jackets, slacks, and hats. The people all have pale or peachy skin. The man holding out the cards wears a plumed, bicorn hat, a thick white scarf around his neck, and a long, dark coat. His long gray hair is looped into a knot on his upper back, and a thick white sideburn curls along the cheek we see. He has a prominent nose, thin mustache, and his lips are parted as he faces our left in profile. Glints of gold on his hat and back of his coat could be bells, and he wears a gold hoop earring. A young woman with smooth skin, a low-cut, very pale green dress and matching bonnet reaches out to take a card. Another wearing a mob cap and cloak stands at her far shoulder, and two children stand between her and the cardsharp. A pair of young boys stand with the cardsharp, facing away from us and looking down at the cards. More men and women in earth-toned clothes, some tattered, gather in a tight cluster around a wooden table beyond this grouping. On the table is a metal cup and some glass balls, perhaps marbles. A small, furry, brown dog sits and looks up and to the right with dark eyes in the bottom right corner of the painting. This group is backed by a high wall, presumably enclosing a private garden. Trees reach into the cloud-streaked blue sky beyond the wall. Two more dogs walk among the townspeople who move along the street to the left. Building facades on the far side of the walkway are in shadow, but one is labeled Patissier. The artist signed and dated the painting near the lower left corner, “L. Boilly 1806.”
Louis-Léopold Boilly, The Card Sharp on the Boulevard, 1806, oil on wood, Gift of Victoria and Roger Sant, 2000.5.1

Details

  • Dates

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  • Locations

    West Building Main Floor
Fourteen men, women, and children focus their attention on a man fanning out a deck of cards in a town street in the right half of this horizontal painting. More men and women stand in small groups or walk in the left half. The women wear bonnets and long dresses and cloaks. The men wear jackets, slacks, and hats. The people all have pale or peachy skin. The man holding out the cards wears a plumed, bicorn hat, a thick white scarf around his neck, and a long, dark coat. His long gray hair is looped into a knot on his upper back, and a thick white sideburn curls along the cheek we see. He has a prominent nose, thin mustache, and his lips are parted as he faces our left in profile. Glints of gold on his hat and back of his coat could be bells, and he wears a gold hoop earring. A young woman with smooth skin, a low-cut, very pale green dress and matching bonnet reaches out to take a card. Another wearing a mob cap and cloak stands at her far shoulder, and two children stand between her and the cardsharp. A pair of young boys stand with the cardsharp, facing away from us and looking down at the cards. More men and women in earth-toned clothes, some tattered, gather in a tight cluster around a wooden table beyond this grouping. On the table is a metal cup and some glass balls, perhaps marbles. A small, furry, brown dog sits and looks up and to the right with dark eyes in the bottom right corner of the painting. This group is backed by a high wall, presumably enclosing a private garden. Trees reach into the cloud-streaked blue sky beyond the wall. Two more dogs walk among the townspeople who move along the street to the left. Building facades on the far side of the walkway are in shadow, but one is labeled Patissier. The artist signed and dated the painting near the lower left corner, “L. Boilly 1806.”
Louis-Léopold Boilly, The Card Sharp on the Boulevard, 1806, oil on wood, Gift of Victoria and Roger Sant, 2000.5.1

Overview: Scenes of daily life by Antoine Watteau, Jean Siméon Chardin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, François Boucher, Louis-Léopold Boilly, and other 18th-century French artists were presented in this exhibition of 106 paintings and one drawing. This first large-scale survey of French genre painting included works spanning the century, from the time of Louis XIV to the French Revolution. A companion exhibition, Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France, was on view in the ground floor central galleries from October 26, 2003-February 16, 2004.

An audio tour was narrated by National Gallery of Art Director Earl A. Powell III and included commentary by Philip Conisbee, senior curator of European painting at the National Gallery; Colin B. Bailey, chief curator of the Frick Collection, New York; and Susan Siegfried, professor of art history, University of Michigan.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Philip Conisbee was curator of the Washington exhibition, in collaboration with Colin B. Bailey, chief curator of the Frick Collection and former chief curator, National Gallery of Canada, and Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director, Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris.

Sponsor: The exhibition was made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation. It was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Attendance: 91,018

Catalog: The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, by Colin B. Bailey, Philip Conisbee, and Thomas W. Gaehtgens. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, in association with the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2003.

Brochure: The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, by Philip Conisbee. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003.

Other Venues:

  • National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 06/06/2003–09/07/2003
  • Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 02/08/2004–05/09/2004

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