Gustave Jacquet

Detroit Golf Club, Michigan (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 5, 1999, lot 96, illustrated)
Williams and Son, London
Callan Fine Art, New Orleans
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2001

As with Soulacroix's The Concert, (see lot 115) Jacquet looks to the past to recreate a scene from seventeenth century courtly life. While Soulacroix fills his expansive canvas with a frieze-like arrangement of a concert's audience, Jacquet prefers a more intimate composition, populating his work with a select group of elegantly dressed men and women and their servants enjoying a lunch and recital al fresco. While the title of the work, The Recital, and the central group of musicians provide the basic theme of the genre subject, Jacquet carefully arranges standing, strolling, strumming and sitting guests to suggest a more nuanced narrative. With further study each figure reveals a particular expression: an exchanged or ignored glance, a frustrated frown or wry smile. Humbly dressed, haughty servers carry drinks on silver trays, while a young lady in pink ignores the glance of her blond companion in favor of the flautist, while the entrance of a woman wearing a scarlet dress captivates the majority of eyes.  In its period detail and complex interaction of figures, The Recital is informed by a movement earlier in the nineteenth century, in which artists such as Delacroix and Ingres focused on depicting cavaliers and ladies. Jacquet's work also incorporates earlier elements from the seventeenth century known as "Company" pictures as they captured the various characteristics of a gathering of people, each painted with a different manner, allowing for diverse personalities to be clearly distinguished and relationships suggested by pose and facial expression.  Moreover, Jacquet's high level of painterly virtuosity and finish combine a feel of refined elegance and lavish luxury, providing an impressive setting for his suggested story to unfold.  In the end, the work's historically accurate details and artistic influences offer a pretext to absorb oneself in a compelling drama of period intrigue.