"Our passions are the principal instruments of our preservation. It is, therefore, an enterprise as vain as it is ridiculous to want to destroy them."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1748)

Sunday 11 February 2018

Amorous Couple by Nicolas Lancret



This painting by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) is in stark contrast to the Fête galante paintings for which he was most famous  Fête galante was a term invented to describe Anotoine Watteau's (1684-1721) paintings of aristocrats in ball or fancy dress clothes disporting themselves in an idealised countryside.

Lancret, who was thrown out of the Académie Royale for bad behaviour, joined the workshop of Watteau's teacher, Claude Gillot,and by the 1720, after the death of Watteau and Gillot, monopolised the fête galante style, eventually producing over 700 paintings.

He died in 1743, at the age fifty three, two years after marrying an eighteen year old.  This picture, while not explicit, has a joyous earthiness about it, as the man pulls up the girl's shift to reveal her plump bottom.  good kissing, too!

2 comments:

  1. I saw that the old Penthouse sets that were on your site have been removed. Are there plans to post them again?

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    1. Google removed all my blogs, I am assuming for copyright issues although they offered no explanation. I have decided to only post material that is in the public domain. I am working on redoing the magazine posts as PDFs which can be e-mailed to subscribers.

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