A Serenade Near a Fountain (Primary Title)
Jacques de Lajoüe, French, 1687 - 1761 (Artist)
Colorful, lush, and bursting with fantasy and wit, the
art of Jacques de Lajoüe perfectly embodies what came
to be known as the Rococo picturesque genre in early
18th-century France. The artist was a decorator as well
as a painter, and inventive depictions of dreamlike park
and garden scenes like this one were immensely fashionable as decorative panels. Lajoüe’s paintings and decors
were intended to surround his aristocratic patrons with
the creations of his fantastic imagination. He often
incorporated surprising interactions between the
painting’s human characters and the inanimate figures
that decorated sculpture or architecture in the composition. This work features two actors of the commedia
dell’arte (a popular form of improvised theater using
stock characters and situations) serenading a lone
woman, each man apparently hoping to seduce her with
his talent. This trivial scene of everyday desires occupies
only a small portion of the canvas. Clearly, Lajoüe
preferred to devote considerable space to the lavishly
ornate and monumentally sized fountain. Although
the woman’s reaction is not visible to the viewer, the
sculpted nymphs that laze upon the fountain appear
completely enamored with the performance.
The Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III Collection
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