Alexandre Hyacinthe Dunouy | View in a Park | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title: View in a Park

Artist: Alexandre Hyacinthe Dunouy (French, Paris 1757–1841 Jouy-en-Josas)

Medium: Oil on paper, laid down on ledger paper

Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 12 in. (22.2 x 30.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Whitney Collection, Promised Gift of Wheelock Whitney III, and Purchase, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McVeigh, by exchange, 2003

Accession Number: 2003.42.26

In the latter 1700s the severity of landscape architecture exemplified by André Le Nôtre’s designs for Versailles in the prior century gave way to a new informality inspired by models from across the Channel. The English in their turn had drawn inspiration for their private parks from the arcadian paintings of artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Salvator Rosa, which they had acquired in Italy on the Grand Tour. Within a short distance of Paris, the châteaux at Ermenonville, Malmaison, Montmorency, and Saint-Cloud all acquired parks in the new style, and their embellishment continued well into the nineteenth century. Under the Empire, Dunouy received a number of commissions from the new crop of owners of these domains, notably from Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte, at Mortefontaine, for whom in 1806 he executed a pair of views of the grounds (private collection; formerly Ben Elwes Fine Art, London). The park depicted here has not been identified, but the gentleness of the landscape is undoubtedly attributable as much to its design as to Dunouy’s idealizing tendencies. This sketch may date to the first years after 1800, but it could also have been painted after the artist’s second Italian sojourn (1810–15). For a sketch comparable in style and of similar size, see Le Paysage français de Valenciennes à Bonington (exh. cat., Talabardon & Gautier, Paris, 2002, unpaginated, no. 21, ill.).

Asher Ethan Miller 2013

[Galerie de Staël, Paris, until 1992; sold on December 21 to Whitney]; Wheelock Whitney III, New York (from 1992)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785–1850," January 22–April 21, 2013, unnumbered cat. (fig. 12).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence," March 12–July 29, 2018, unnumbered cat.

Asher Ethan Miller. "The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785–1850." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 70 (Winter 2013), pp. 15, 45, fig. 12 (color).

Colta Ives. Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2018, pp. 14, 181, fig. 10 (color).