Prisms, Palettes and Panoramas: Colouring the World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Résumé
An exhibition took place in 2012 at the Musée Cognacq-Jay 'La Patine du temps,' arguing that it is impossible to restore paintings to their original state. One of the most telling examples was a comparison of two portraits of a child by Greuze (1775), where the unrestored painting, though crackled, had depth, whereas the relined painting, though it had a faultless surface in an attempt to restore it to its original state, gave a very flat effect and had lost its depth. You will note that the exhibition was contemporary with the controversial restoration of Leonardo's Saint Anne in the Louvre, and remember that Cognacq-Jay is a museum of the City of Paris whereas the Louvre is a national museum; they may have different approaches. b. 17th and 18th-century writers knew that colours change; they knew that in addition, varnish darkens, and so a dark picture was an asset-a proof that it was an Old Master painting, so much so that forgers sold deliberately darkened pictures. Hogarth makes fun of the taste for dark paintings in his Time Smoking a Picture (1761). Experimenting on pigments sometimes had a disastrous result, as some of Reynolds's paintings show. He experimented on various mixtures, which in the course of time proved to be unstable and darken. As part of the debate on the relative merits of drawing and colour initiated in the academies of the 17th century, and on the relative merits of painting and of literature, colour was an image of transience, a view put forward by Pope in An Essay on Criticism (1709) The treach'rous colours the fair art betray, And all the bright creation fades away ! (494-95)
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et Société
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)