Presented by the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation
Step back in time to 18th-century France at the annual Rosenberg Fête celebrating French painting and sculpture from the Michael L. Rosenberg Collection.
This year, Dr. Yuriko Jackall, Head, European Art and Elizabeth and Allan Shelden Curator of European Paintings, Detroit Institute of Arts, presents Jacques-Louis David’s Encounters with the Rococo.
The artist and revolutionary Jacques-Louis David is widely considered the father of that most sober and serious of styles, Neoclassicism. But, paradoxically, his origins lie in the more decorative aesthetic of the Rococo, one that was so closely associated with the decadence and frivolity of the Ancien Régime that David’s students would famously adopt the disparaging rallying cry of “Van Loo, Pompadour, Rococo!” François Boucher, a distant cousin, wielded significant influence on David’s early artistic development. In turn, David went out of his way to protect Jean-Honoré Fragonard, author of The Swing (Wallace Collection, London), from the vicissitudes of politics and changing taste. Taking the Dallas Museum of Art’s important early history painting Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe as a starting point, and looking closely at its relationship to paintings such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s Dreamer (Michael L. Rosenberg Collection), this lecture will trace the complex and surprising story of David’s relationship to the Rococo.
Schedule of Events:
Period Music in the Galleries
5:30–6:20 p.m., European Art Galleries, Level 2
As you browse the European Art galleries, enjoy a musical performance featuring 18th-century music.
Lecture: Jacques-Louis David’s Encounters with the Rococo
6:30–7:30 p.m., Horchow Auditorium
This series is supported by the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation.
Image: Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe, 1772. Jacques-Louis David. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Mrs. John B. O'Hara Fund in honor of Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, 2008.6.FA.
To request accessibility accommodations such as ASL interpretation, gallery stools, or wheelchairs, please send an email to access@dma.org.