Galeries nationales du Grand-Palais.
Wearing black silk wristbands, lace flounces and a powdered wig, Mrs Addington is sitting boyishly astride a Chippendale chair, with a coy finger to her lip. The first of its kind to show a casually posed woman with a come-hither look, this astonishing portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds in London in 1771 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven) perverts the aristocratic codes of representation. The model could only be an actress…Bringing face-to-face some 140 paintings and sculptures from public and private collections in Europe and America, the exhibition tries to catch the moment between public and private worlds when other rules of portraiture emerge.
Between 1770 and 1830, although very much in vogue in England and America, the painted portrait was still a minor genre in the hierarchy established in France by the Academy, placed after history painting. Nonetheless, like sculpted portraits, it flourished in the West in response to a strong public and private demand. Far from staying within the traditional codes dictated by the desire for pomp and prestige, the art of portrait painting enjoyed unprecedented popularity and gradually prevailed as the modern genre par excellence.
After the recent success of monograph exhibitions on the great masters of portraiture, Goya, Houdon, Canova, David or Ingres, this exhibition offers an international panorama of the subject for the first time.
