This celebrated painting and its nearby pendant, The Garter, exemplify a genre of painting known as tableaux de mode (paintings of fashionable society) established by de Troy. Rejecting religious or mythological subjects, artists represented the latest interior decoration, clothing, etiquette, and social mores. Here an amorous couple flirts beneath an image of Mars and Venus, relegated to wall decoration, while the eager dog hints none too subtly at the passions concealed behind their delicate gestures. In the 1720s, the meticulous rhyming of curves among picture frame, chair rail, and sofa was extremely in vogue, but in de Troy’s composition it also underscores the theme of physical union.
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Title:The Declaration of Love
Artist:Jean François de Troy (French, Paris 1679–1752 Rome)
Date:ca. 1724
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:25 5/8 × 21 in. (65.1 × 53.3 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019
Object Number:2019.141.21
Jean François de Troy was first taught by his father, the painter François de Troy (1645–1730), and later studied in Rome; he was elected a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1708 on the basis of his painting Niobe and Her Children (Musée Fabre, Montpellier). During his own time, he was considered one of France’s finest history painters, but was also known for his tableaux de mode, a genre he is credited with inventing that depicts detailed scenes of fashionably dressed people at leisure. Although related to Watteau’s fêtes galantes, de Troy’s pictures of this sort are less ethereal and more detailed, perhaps influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. In 1734 de Troy received a commission to paint several sets of allegorical pictures for royal apartments at Versailles and Fontainebleau. When François Le Moyne (1688–1737) was named first painter to the king in 1736, de Troy turned to designing tapestries for the Gobelins factory. In 1738 he was named director of the French Academy in Rome, a position he held until his death in 1752.
This picture and its pendant, The Garter, both depicting stylish young couples dallying in sumptuously decorated interiors, are two of de Troy’s finest examples of tableaux de mode. De Troy has painted the rooms’ furnishings in such detail that the clothing and many of the objects can be identified. In the Declaration, for example, the porphyry vase with gilt-bronze mounts that sits atop a marble pedestal at right also appears in de Troy’s official portrait of the thirteen-year-old Louis XV and the six-year-old Infanta of Spain, painted in 1723 on the occasion of their short-lived engagement (Galleria Palatina, Florence). (The young king sports shoes with red-lacquer heels like those worn by the man in both the Declaration and the Garter.) The scantily clad lovers in the landscape painting above the sofa in the Declaration obviously comment upon the elegantly clothed couple below. The painting is related to a lost mythological picture by de Troy of Mars embracing Venus in a landscape, known from an etching by Caylus (see Rosenberg 1976).
According to tradition, The Declaration of Love and The Garter are said to have been owned by Frederick the Great (1712–1786), King of Prussia, and later by William I (1797–1888). In fact, as Leribault (2002) points out, although Frederick the Great is known to have purchased two works by de Troy in Paris (see Paul Seidel, “Friedrich der Grosse als Sammler,” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 15 [1894], p. 51), these are undoubtedly to be identified with another work titled Declaration of Love (still at Frederick’s palace of Sanssouci in Potsdam) and The Reading from Molière (private collection, Great Britain). The history of the two Metropolitan Museum pendants can be traced back no further than 1883, when Carl Ludwig Kuhtz lent them to an exhibition in Berlin.
Although both works were among the seven pictures de Troy exhibited to acclaim at the Salon of 1725, only The Declaration of Love is mentioned in the review of the previous year’s exhibition held in the Place Dauphine, and it seems likely that The Garter was excluded, perhaps because of its more risqué subject (Leribault 2002).
Copies of the two works are in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts (oil on canvas, Gift of C. A. Wimpfheimer, Class of 1949).
Gretchen Wold 2014
Inscription: Signed (on the woman's wristband): DETROY
Carl Ludwig Kuhtz, Berlin (by 1883–d. 1889; his estate sale, Lepke's, Berlin, February 15, 1898, no. 37, for 14,000 marks); Oscar Huldschinsky, Berlin (by 1906–28; his sale, Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Berlin, May 10, 1928, no. 64, to Thyssen); Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, Rohoncz, Hungary, later Villa Favorita, Lugano (1928–d. 1947); his son, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, his brother and two sisters, Villa Favorita (1947–49); [Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York, with Pinakos (Rudolf J. Heinemann), 1949–55; sold to Wrightsman]; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York (1955–his d. 1986; cat., 1973, no. 29); Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York (1986–d. 2019; cat., 2005, no. 45)
Paris. Place Dauphine. June 1724, no catalogue [see Mercure de France 1724].
Paris. Salon. August 25–September 3, 1725, no catalogue [see Mercure de France 1725].
Berlin. Königliche Akademie der Künste. "Ausstellung von Gemälden älterer Meister im Berliner Privatbesitz," January 25–March 12, 1883, no. 46 (of works in the Langer Saal, lent by Carl Kuhtz).
Berlin. Ehemalig Gräflich Redern'schen Palais. "Ausstellung von Werken Alter Kunst," January 27–March 4, 1906, no. 144 (as "Zutrauliche Liebeswerbung," lent by Oscar Huldschinsky).
Munich. Neue Pinakothek. "Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz," 1930, no. 329.
London. Royal Academy of Arts. "France in the Eighteenth Century," January 6–March 3, 1968, no. 669 (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Wrightsman).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bellini to Tiepolo: Summer Loans at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 29–August 31, 1993, unnum. checklist.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts," December 10, 2021–March 6, 2022, unnumbered cat.
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.
Mercure de France 2 (June 1724), p. 1391 [reprinted in Leribault 2002, p. 58], states that "On voyait de M. de Troye, le fils, déjà connu par de plus grands ouvrages, un Tableau qui fait beaucoup d'honneur à son pinceau, par l'entente & le goût galant & vrai dont il est composé. C'est un jeune Cavalier en habit de velours, dont l'étoffe est veritablement moëlleuse, auprès d'une Dame assise sur un canapé".
"Exposition de tableaux." Mercure de France 2 (June 1725), p. 1402 [reprinted in Georges Wildenstein, "Le Salon de 1725," Paris 1924, p. 40; see also Leribault 2002, p. 58], includes this work and its pendant among seven works exhibited by de Troy at the Salon that year, as "une declaration d'amour. Une jeune personne habillée de blanc, paroît assise sur un Sopha, appuyée sur un carreau de toile peinte; elle se tourne pour regarder un Cavalier en habit de velours qui lui parle. Il y a un petit chien sur le devant. Le fond est fort bien décoré".
W[ilhelm von]. Bode and R[obert]. Dohme. "Die Ausstellung von Gemälden älterer Meister im Berliner Privatbesitz." Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 4 (1883), p. 254.
Charles Ephrussi. "Exposition d'oeuvres de maîtres anciens tirées des collections privées de Berlin en 1883." Gazette des beaux-arts, 2nd ser., 30 (1884), p. 104.
Wilhelm Bode. Die Sammlung Oscar Huldschinsky. Frankfurt, 1909, pp. 26–27, 40, no. 46, ill. p. 26 (installation photo), pl. XXXVII, as probably formerly in the collection of King Frederick II (Frederick the Great).
H. Mireur. Dictionnaire des ventes d'art. Vol. 7, Paris, 1912, p. 216, as sold for 17,625 francs at the Kuhtz sale of 1898.
Louis Réau. Histoire de la peinture française au XVIIIe siècle. Vol. 1, Paris, 1925, p. 30 n. 1.
Max J. Friedländer. "Die Sammlung Oscar Huldschinsky." Der Cicerone 20 (1928), p. 4, ill. p. 8.
"Les ventes." Revue de l'art ancien et moderne 54 (June 1928), p. 228, ill. p. 225, records the two pictures as having sold for 1,900,000 francs at the Huldschinsky sale.
Gaston Brière in Louis Dimier. Les peintres français du XVIII siècle. Vol. 2, Paris, 1930, p. 40, no. 85, pl. 7, erroneously illustrates it as in the Musée de Berlin.
Gaston Brière. "Jean-François de Troy, peintre de la société élégante: Nouveaux renseignements sur l'œuvre de l'artiste." Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français (1931), p. 164, states that both pictures were lent to the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1931.
Charles Sterling inChefs d'œuvre de l'art français. Exh. cat., Palais National des Arts. Paris, 1937, p. 77, under no. 148, refers to the two pictures now at the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, exhibited as by de Troy, as replicas of the MMA works.
Rudolf Heinemann. Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz. Lugano-Castagnola, 1937, vol. 1, p. 154, no. 429; vol. 2, pl. 259.
Hans Vollmer inAllgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Hans Vollmer. Vol. 33, Leipzig, 1939, p. 442.
Rudolf Heinemann in Villa Favorita, Castagnola/Lugano. Aus dem Besitz der Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz. Castagnola/Lugano, 1949, pp. 74–75, no. 255.
Jean Cailleux. "The 'Lecture de Molière' by Jean François de Troy and Its Date." Burlington Magazine 102 (February 1960), unpaginated.
Jacques Thuillier and Albert Châtelet. French Painting. Geneva, 1964, p. 149.
Denys Sutton. France in the Eighteenth Century. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts. London, 1968, p. 121, no. 669, colorpl. IV.
Denys Sutton. "Editorial: Le Dix-huitième Siècle Revived." Apollo 87 (January 1968), p. 6, ill. on cover (color).
Denys Sutton. "Pleasure for the Aesthete." Apollo 90 (September 1969), p. 236, colorpl. XXIII, notes that there are close variants of the two pictures in the collection of Harold Wimpfheimer, New York (now Williams College Museum of Art).
Andrea Busiri Vici. "Opere romane di Jean de Troy." Antichità viva 9 (March–April 1970), pp. 6, 17 n. 12, fig. 1.
Everett Fahy inThe Wrightsman Collection. Vol. 5, Paintings, Drawings. [New York], 1973, pp. 284–88, 292–96, no. 30, ill. p. 285 (color), figs. 2, 8 (details), provides extensive provenance information; relates the compositions of the two pictures to contemporary French theater, especially the social comedies of Pierre Marivaux (1688–1763); notes that the vase at right reappears in de Troy's father's portrait of Louis XV and the Infanta of Spain (Galleria Palatina, Florence; actually by Jean François de Troy himself); states that Jacques Vilain (correspondence, 1972) has identified the painting on the wall as a lost canvas by de Troy depicting "Mars and Venus Embracing in a Landscape," whose composition is recorded in an engraving by Caylus in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
R. A. Cecil. "The Wrightsman Collection." Burlington Magazine 118 (July 1976), p. 518, calls it enchanting.
E. Bénézit. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. new ed. Paris, 1976, vol. 10, p. 287.
Pierre Rosenberg. "La donation Herbette." Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 26, no. 2 (1976), pp. 93–94, 98 nn. 4, 5, figs. 2, 3 (overall and detail), relates the painting appearing on the wall above the couple to one in the Louvre depicting Mars and Venus by an unknown French eighteenth-century painter.
David Wakefield. French Eighteenth-Century Painting. London, 1984, p. 52.
Denys Sutton. "Frivolity and Reason." Apollo 125 (February 1987), fig. 4.
Colin B. Bailey inThe Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David. Exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. New York, 1992, p. 220, fig. 2, under no. 19 [French ed., "Les amours des dieux: la peinture mythologique de Watteau à David," Paris, 1991, p. 124, fig. 2, under no. 19], calls it "de Troy's masterpiece in the genre".
Richard Rand inIntimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century France. Exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Hanover, N.H., 1997, pp. 104, 108 n. 3, fig. 41, under nos. 9–10.
Katharina Krause. "Genrebilder: Mode und Gesellschaft der Aristokraten bei Jean-François de Troy." Festschrift für Johannes Langner zum 65. Geburtstag am 1. Februar 1997. Ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers and Annemarie Jaeggi. Münster, 1997, pp. 145–46, 155 n. 30, fig. 2.
Christophe Leribault. Jean-François de Troy (1679–1752). Paris, 2002, pp. 58–60, 264, 268–71, 437, no. P.113a, ill. pp. 58 (color), 270, rejects the tradition of Frederick the Great and Wilhelm I as former owners, identifying the two de Troys known to have been in Frederick's collection (see Seidel 1894, 1922) as a second work called "The Declaration of Love" (P.202; Sanssouci, Potsdam) and "The Reading from Molière" (P.203; private collection, Great Britain); believes the two versions in Williamstown could be autograph copies.
Everett Fahy inThe Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 162–66, no. 45, ill. (color).
Everett Fahy inPhilippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977–2008. New York, 2009, p. 32, fig. 41 (color).
Old Master Paintings: Part I. Christie's, New York. January 28, 2015, p. 114, under no. 40.
David Pullins. "'Quelques misérables places à remplir': Locating Shaped Painting in Eighteenth-Century France." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 80, no. 4 (2017), pp. 544–45, 548, 556, 565, fig. 1 (color).
Robin Pogrebin. "The Met is Given Hundreds of Artworks." New York Times (November 16, 2019), p. C3 [online ed., "A Trustee Leaves Trove of Old Masters Works to the Met," November 13, 2019; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/arts/design/bequest-met-museum-wrightsman.html].
Hakim Bishara. "A Glorious Gift of European Artworks Is on Display at the Metropolitan Museum." Hyperallergic. November 19, 2019, ill. (color, installation view) [https://hyperallergic.com/528444/a-glorious-gift-of-european-artworks-is-on-display-at-the-metropolitan-museum/].
Susanna Caviglia. History, Painting, and the Seriousness of Pleasure in the Age of Louis XV. Liverpool, 2020, p. 44, fig. 10.
Old Masters. Christie's, New York. October 15, 2020, p. 174, under no. 57.
The Private Collection of Jayne Wrightsman. Christie's, New York. October 14, 2020, p. 29.
Guillaume Faroult. L'Amour peintre: L'imagerie érotique en France au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 2020, pp. 167–68, 223–24, fig. 82 (color).
David Pullins in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2018–20, Part I: Antiquity to the Late Eighteenth Century." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 78 (Winter 2021), p. 39, ill. p. 38 (color).
Colin B. Bailey. "Review of Baetjer 2019." Burlington Magazine 163 (May 2021), p. 470.
Wolf Burchard. Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2021, pp. 135–36, 220, fig. 122 (color).
This work may not be lent, by terms of its acquisition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
ca. 1769
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