Meditate with Jean-François Garneray

Lost thoughts

A large white diagonal crosses this classical painting, which depicts a bourgeois interior and paints the portrait of an illustrious man from the beginning of this new century. The face, pale and dreamy, almost blends in with the portraits hanging on the wall behind him. It rests on a long, warm white wool dressing gown with a wide raised collar. The drape of the fabric descends under the table where white silk stockings take over until joining black patent shoes.

The feet are crossed one over the other, creating astonishment: this is a very unconventional carelessness for this representative of the old Agenese nobility who is the Count of Lacépède, close to Napoleon and professor at the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris. The man has just written a treatise on fish, a copy of which adorns his table. His current work evokes theNatural history of cetaceans.

The Parisian painter Jean-François Garneray seems to capture a furtive moment of personal meditation: is it because the zoologist, his gaze into space and his hand raised above the sheet, is meditating on his career as a senator which is coming to an end?

The light penetrating through an off-camera bay window illuminates a precious wooden floor with geometric patterns while illuminating the character, as if to evoke this always delicate crossroads of a life. Thus, the top of the table is darker. Even the large mirror above the fireplace only reflects black, struggling to reflect the two extinguished candlesticks placed on the marble of a fireplace, also extinguished. What will ultimately remain as an image of our impulses?