Les Deux Amies by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée

We recently posted a nicely sensual painting by the French painter Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée.  Here, however, is something which is much more blatantly erotic.

The Two Friends depicts two women lying in bed, their legs arranged in the scissors position of tribades.  In  fact, our friend S from Vancouver says that this position is now not approved of by lesbian fundamentalists, who argue that it is a position borne of male fantasy.  If so, it is an old fantasy as there are many pictures depicting women in this position which have been produced in the past centuries. 

The blonde sprawls in ecstasy, legs spread, while the brunette strokes her arm with her toes.  Lagrenée's couple are not actually depicted in the act but the position is hugely suggestive and the hint of the blonde's pubic hair shows that this picture, which is unlike anything else in Lagrenée's oeuvre, was painted either for himself or, more likely, a private collector.  

It was sold to another private collector at Christies in 1997 for $115,000; more than twice the estimate.

Mars and Venus: allegory of peace by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée

This was, originally, our 100th post in the old incarnation of the Seduction of and I liked the painting so much that I made it the blog's header.  So it is only right, in the new Seduction of Venus, that it becomes the first post.

This is a gently seductive piece by French painter Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée (1724-1805).  Painted in 1770, it shows Mars and Venus, rather racily for the time, in bed together.  No doubt the use of the word "allegory" in the title helped to make this more acceptable.  The whole atmosphere of the picture is determinedly post-coital and Lagrenée has Mars pushing aside the (beautifully rendered) drapes around the bed to reveal the naked hidden treasure within. Your eye is immediately drawn to Venus' pale body; her skin painted in much lighter tones than Mars'.  Venus has tamed Mars, as his abandoned sword and helmet attest, through love (or, perhaps, sex).

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée

Lagrenée won the Prix de Rome at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1749 and went to Rome to study under Carle van Loo, a Rococo rival of Boucher and teacher of Fragonard as well.  He was received into the Académie in 1755 and from 1760 until 1762, he directed the Saint Petersburg Academy at the Russian court. When he returned to France he became a professor at the French Académie and although he painted some large official commissions, it was generally his smaller works which were better received and more popular with collectors.  This painting, for example, which now hangs in the J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles, is a comparatively modest 40 inches by 30 inches in size.