François Adolphe Grison

A bustling crowd pauses to watch as the cab of an elegantly dressed, lovely lady is placed before a bowing gentleman.  Indeed, all traffic is stopped in Grison’s A Happy Encounter which takes place on one of Rouen's busiest streets, the Rue du Gros Horloge, a main thoroughfare between the cathedral and Place du Vieux-Marché.  The most famous landmark of the street, looming above the crowds in Grison's painting, is the grandly decorated Gros Horloge itself, built in 1389, originally located in a connecting belfry and relocated to this arch in the mid-sixteenth century.  The Gros Horloge was a consistent reminder of time's fleeting passage, marking the hour of the day along with signs of the weeks on the lower half of the face, while the upper bull's eye shows the phases of the moon.  A major decorative motif of the clock’s arch is that of the “Good Shepherd”, Christ and his lambs, looking downward on the light-hearted scene below.  Sheep symbolized the importance of the wool trade, a central component to Rouen's wealth and influence. In fact, the pausing dapper gentleman and his lady could easily be wealthy wool merchants. The full cart behind them may be bringing skeins to market, while the shop keepers lay out their wares for the moneyed to buy.  Despite these economic symbols, this scene extols more than the virtues of work--the busy bustle is completely halted by the demands of amour. One footman holds out his hand to stop passerbys in one direction, a schoolmaster with disapproving smirk holds his cane against the path of his giggling young charges, and a group of girls stop from fetching water at the fountain as they spy the scene.  Ultimately this fountain reveals that romance is the true center of this. Installed in its niche in the eighteenth century, the fountain, with its bevy of cherubs and Classical figures, tells the legend of Arethusa, a young huntress and Alpheus, the river-god.  Chased by Alpheus, the chaste Arethusa cried out for help from hunt-goddess Artemis, who turned her into an underground spring only to have her waters mingle with those of her pursuer. This mythology, together with the counting clock, and the busy street, are all visual clues which Grison intended to be deciphered and combined by the viewer to create a narrative—a delightful story of courtship, vulnerable to time's passage, but with the powerful ability to interrupt any work-a-day routine.