An exhibition reveals its evolution

It all started with a canvas as beautiful as mysterious. A family portrait of which we do not know everything, from the identity of the author to the characters represented. In the center of the painting, the father, shirt a neglected bit and hair in battle, is accompanied by his four children. In a tender and natural gesture, he holds his youngest very close to him. On the right, a little girl plays the piano, supervised by two elders with elegant clothes and the installation guaranteed.

This enigmatic masterpiece, from the collections of the Téssé museum of Le Mans (Sarthe) and dated from the very beginning of the 19th century, was the starting point for the exhibition “Sage as an image?” Childhood in the eye of artists (1790-1850) ”. Ascent in partnership with the Louvre Museum, it is to be discovered in the Sarthoise capital.

“The father remains behind, without trying to establish his power or authority,” observes Côme Fabre, co-commissioner of the exhibition. On the contrary, it is felt very proud of his children, confident in their future. »»

During the long history of Western art, children have often been represented as symbols, but rarely for themselves. In religious painting, they take the idealized features of the Jesus child, when it is not the celestial appearance of cherubs and cherubs. In mythological scenes, they are eros or cupid. And when they are found in the portraits of large princely or aristocratic families, it is because they embody dynastic continuity.

“At the end of the 18th century, the child was (now) perceived for what it is, with its own world,” notes Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan, the other exhibition commissioner. This vision of things owes a lot to the publication ofEmile or education, de Rousseau, in 1762. “

In this famous treaty, the Geneva philosopher changes the eyes of adults on childhood, inviting them to consider it as a privileged moment of innocence and harmony with nature. As a child in the war or in the revolution, a small worker, a cursed prince – like the moving and rare marble bust of the very young Louis XVII, imprisoned and mistreated in the Parisian jails of the Tour du Temple -, miserable orphan or small chimney sweep descended from the mountains of Savoy … through a hundred works – paintings, sculptures, prints or photographs – of which From the Louvre, the exhibition explores the new artistic representations of childhood which flourish during this half-century rich in political and social upheavals.

New family ties

It also highlights new links within families. “The slow but sensitive progression of life expectancy means that children are more and more likely to know their grandparents,” said Côme Fabre. Evidenced by these canvases of Constant Joseph Desbordes or Jacques-Augustin-Catherine Poujou, which make three generations coexist.

Other works depict the new figure of the student, since, as the commissioner recalls, “the school was not yet the founding institution of the nation which it will become under the Third Republic”. The table Christian school in Versailles, From Antoinette Asselineau, thus gives the precious opportunity to enter a class where the little schoolgirls, wearing a cap, apply, leaning on their notebooks.

The route ends on the strange Portrait of Louise Vernet Children (Around 1818), painted by Théodore Géricault. On a dark, almost disturbing background, a girl in a blue dress fixes us with her big eyes. Complex emotions are read on his baby face where one perceives as an air of challenge. The child is no longer a miniature adult. It has become a subject in its own right.