Comparison, Emulation and Competition: Flemish Painting in French 18th Century Collections

Enlightening online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at the collecting of Flemish painting in France on the 18th century and the influence of that on French art.

Christopher Vogtherr from the Prussian Palaces and Gardens in Berlin explained how Flemish art started to enter the French royal collection mainly via the portrait artists they employed such as Rubens and Frans Porbus the Younger culminating in the commissioning of the great Marie de Medici cycle from Rubens.

A greater variety of work entered the collection under Louis XIV mainly via still-lives and battle pictures. However on his death this increased and a series of other major collections started to emerge which features Flemish art on an equal footing with Italian. Though these collections Vogtherr talked about Roger de Piles principles of hanging art choosing work through the power of the painting not the subjects or schools and the development of the idea of the three schools of art, Italian, Netherlandish and French which led to contemporary French art being hung with the Grand Masters.

Finally Vogtherr discussed how this collecting and promotion of Flemish art influenced French artists quoting incidences where Watteau directly references Rubens’ work as well as the influence it had on Chardin’s still-lives and genre pictures.

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