Item | Waddesdon Manor

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artist or maker

Lancret, Nicolas (b.1690, d.1743)

Date

1735-1737

dated stylistically

Place of production

Paris, France

Medium

oil on panel

Type of object

paintings

Accession number

2459.1

Oil painting on panel depicting a rural gathering outside a church. The church is in the centre background of the composition. Several figures stand on the church steps. The rest of the figures gather in the foreground, in front of bulidings and a gateway attached to the church. The group includes women wearing aprons and caps with long lappets; men in jackets carrying tricorn hats; and women in fashionable dresses and house bonnets.

To the right of centre, there is a middle-aged rotund priest holding the hand of a well-dressed young woman, probably the bride. In the foreground there is a man wearing a red jacket and tricorn hat, probably the groom, standing next to a donkey. A child helps walk the donkey. The man and the child look back towards the woman. To the left, there is a seated well-dressed man and woman looking at the central woman. The man lolls back as if drunk. Two girls, a lower-class man and two well-dressed woman observe the group on the left. On the far left, a lower -class man with a stick looks at a baby carried in a cot by a woman wearing a headscarf. An escarpment and trees appears on the right. In the right foreground, a low-class woman collects water from a spout amongst plants.

Commentary

Village scenes were a popular subject with the followers of Antoine Watteau including Jean-Baptiste Pater and Nicolas Lancret. This unusually fine painting shows an amusing scene of everyday life filled with anecdote. Lancret drew on his knowledge of the works of Watteau and the 17th-century painter David Teniers.

The composition of the Waddesdon painting conveys the hopes for the marriage. The bride leaves the protection of the fatherly priest on the right. She is about to be handed over to her expectant husband, who holds the donkey ready to lead her away. There is an amorous couple on the left and a baby on the far left: a sign of the bride and groom's future.

This is a particularly fine painting by an artist sometimes dismissed because of his apparent hard style. The figure of the man with a donkey is well-rendered. In the last eight years of Lancret's life, he explored more fully scenes of peasant life, akin to the naturalism of early works by Watteau. In this painting, he was influenced by the 17th-century artist David Teniers. The man and the woman carrying a child on the extreme left, the man with a donkey in the foreground, and the rather blank piece of architecture set in an unidealized, convincing landscape are all reminiscent of Teniers's paintings. Teniers's pictures were in great demand among Parisian collectors during the early 18th century.

The painting now has a companion piece, also at Waddesdon (acc. no. 2459.2). They were probably not originally painted together as the other painting has been enlarged. One of Lancret's patrons perhaps acquired both paintings at different times, and wanted to make them the same size so they could be displayed together. A similar pair of paintings by Lancret of a wedding dance and wedding feast are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers.

Lancret gained success with such scenes of village life including dances and fairs, also popular in contemporary theatre. In the Salon of 1737, Lancret showed the painting now in the Musée d'Angers of a village wedding. In December of the same year, he was paid for three pictures painted for Fontainebleau, of which one was a 'Noce de Village'. The church and the attached building are repeated in 'The Dance Around a Tree' painted around 1747-50, now in Dresden's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, no. 786.

Displayed in the Tower Drawing Room along with other French works, this was one of a few 18th-century French paintings bought by Ferdinand de Rothschild. Rococo paintings were not in vogue with Victorian collectors in England at this time. Ferdinand seems to have followed this trend, despite his love of French 18th-century furniture and decorative art. This painting may have appealed to him because of its Flemish overtones, matching his fine Dutch and Flemish collection of 17th-century paintings displayed in the Morning Room.

Phillippa Plock, 2011

Physical description

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

440 x 575

Signature & date

signed, lower right (on square stone): Lancret

Inscriptions

[hand-drawn red circle]
Inscription
[verso, on panel, upper left, red chalk]

James
[Ref w?]
Inscription
[verso, on panel centre centre orientated to top, white chalk]

Right Large [Boa?]
Inscription
[verso, on frame, lower centre, orientated towards top, pencil]

Labels

106
Label
[verso, on panel, centre left, round label handwritten in ink]

Left
190
Label
[verso, on frame, upper left, round label, blue pencil]

3
Label
[verso, on panel, upper centre, torn label handwritten in pencil]

190
Label
[verso, on frame, upper right, round label, blue pencil]

Tower Room
Lancret Left fireplace
Label
[verso, on panel, lower left]

Tower Room
Left of fireplace (Bottom)
Label
[verso, on frame, lower left]

90
93
Label
[verso, on frame, lower left, round label, pencil]

History

Provenance

Acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898); inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.

Exhibition history

'Three French Reigns', 1933, 25 Park Lane, London, organised by Sir Philip Sassoon, lent by James de Rothschild, with pendant, as nos 21 and 27 (Breakfast).

Collection

Waddesdon (National Trust)
Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957

Bibliography

♦; Three French Reigns (Louis XIV, XV & XVI) Loan Exhibition in Aid of the Royal Northern Hospital; 25 Park Lane, London, 21 February - 5 April 1933; London; Royal Northern Hospital; 1933; no. 21
Anita Brookner, French Pictures at Waddesdon, The Burlington Magazine, 101, 1959, 271-273; p. 272
Michael Levey, French and Italian Paintings at Waddesdon, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 54, August 1959, 57-66; p. 61
♦; Sir Francis Watson, The Art Collections at Waddesdon Manor I: The Paintings, Apollo, 69, June 1959, 172-182; p. 181, fig. 17
Ellis Waterhouse, Anthony Blunt; Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; Fribourg; Office du Livre, The National Trust; 1967; p. 256, cat. no. 117, ill.; as 'Les Noces de Village', 1735-1737
♦; Martin Eidelberg; Watteau et la Fête Galante; Valenciennnes, Musee des Beaux-Arts, 5 March-14 June 2004; Paris; Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux; 2004; p. 146, fig. 30.2

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