Jaw-Dropping Francophilia
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Some of the most important works of French art in American museums – masterpieces by Chardin, Poussin, Watteau, Fragonard, the Brothers Le Nain, Ingres, Houdon, Claude Lorrain, and Jacques Louis David – have passed through the doors of Wildenstein & Co. The gallery has also mounted spectacular one-person and group shows of Modern artists. To commemorate its centennial, the gallery has gone all out with “The Arts of France from Francois 1 to Napoleon 1: A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein’s Presence in New York.”
The two-floor show is wall-to-wall and jaw-dropping. It includes choice works by all of the above mentioned artists, as well as by Greuze, Clodion, and Prud’hon. The 175 works of French art – paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, tapestries c. 1500-1815 (from the Renaissance to the age of Revolution) – are not only a celebration of the gallery’s centennial but also a history of Francophilia.
As you enter the lobby, the first painting you see, above the guard’s desk, is Chardin’s “The Attentive Nurse, or The Convalescent’s Meal” (c. 1746), a clear, loose, and gorgeous study for the National Gallery’s “The Attentive Nurse” (1747). Upstairs is his allegorical painting “Musical Instruments” (c. 1735), in which the violin bow and his signature, as if carved into stone, , together incise, dissolve, and open into space the solid and frontal plane of the painting.
One of the earliest works on view is the Jean Clouet painting “Francois 1 as St. John the Baptist” (1518).The portrait, which was inspired by Leonardo’s “St. John the Baptist” (1508-13) in the Louvre, is notable for its rocking spatial shifts in the blackness, between St. John’s head, a parrot, and the reed cross.
Among the 17th-century masterpieces are Poussin’s “Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well” (c.1627), a stark contrast between dusty clouds and earthy darks; and Claude Lorrain’s ink drawings of the Roman Colosseum and temple ruins, from 1666, and his “Coastal Scene With an Artist Drawing” (1653), a painting in which everything – the light, the trees, the water, the ship – all seem to spring from the artist’s loins We enter the seascape through the artist, who sits on rocks at the center of the base of the canvas, drawing. Darkness is behind him and everything before his is lit. It is as if the light, the trees, the water, and the ships all seemed to spring from the artist’s loins. (There’s also a very energetic terracotta portrait bust of Poussin by Francois Du Quesnoy.)
Most of the works in the show are from the 18th century. A number of fabulous Watteaus, both drawings and paintings, are scattered throughout the exhibition. Particularly of interest is the artist’s “The Alliance of the Theaters of Paris” (c. 1715), in which an allegory of musical instruments, masks, and sheet music all spin and float in a circular personification of the theater.On the first floor is his tiny “Cupid’s Realm” (c. 1709), a magical work depicting the infant Cupid, surrounded by trees and putti, in a dazzling forest clearing.
Not every work on view is a masterpiece – far from it. Works by Chardin, Ingres, Watteau, and Houdon are surrounded by academic renderings or schmaltzy, pinkcheeked and doe-eyed children by Francois Hubert Drouais or Francois Boucher. But Wildenstein does have groupings of works – including one in which two amazing Houdon sculptures flank Pierre Paul Prud’hon’s erotic, dreamy, allegorical painting “Cupid Seducing Innocence Under the Prompting of Pleasure, With Repentance in Their Wake” (1809-10) – that are out of this world.
“The Arts of France” has a room overflowing with Fragonard’s paintings. It may not compete with the Fragonard Room at the Frick, but every work at Wildenstein – the good, bad, great, and mediocre – contributes to an exhibition that has the power to transport you from the Upper East Side to the Palace of Versailles, the Tuileries Garden, the banks of the Seine, and the forest of Fontainebleau.
Until January 6 (19 E. 64th Street, 212-879-0500).