Monday, May 20, 2013

Bad News (1804)

Marguerite Gerard: Le Mauvaise Nouvelle [Bad News]

Marguerite Gerard (who we have seen here before) submitted to the Salon of 1804 this painting and its companion, Good News (below).


These paintings are done in a style very reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch genre painting: genteel ladies, dressed sumptuously, depicted in interior settings. Bad News in particular is a great genre scene: the lady of the house, receiving bad news via letter, is revived with smelling salts by a servant after swooning.

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