Oil on canvas “Family portrait”, painted wooden cardre.
Initiated in the second half of the eighteenth century, the democratization of the portrait asserted itself during the first half of the nineteenth century. The bourgeoisie gains power and imposes its triumphant image. The kings and the nobility succeed the financiers, the industrialists, the landowners, the bosses of the press, the liberal professions.
In the middle of the 19th century, the great bourgeoisie, both an actor and beneficiary of the industrial revolution, sought to leave the image of its economic and social success to posterity. Instead of belonging to a prestigious lineage of the past, it celebrates the family, the cornerstone of this new model. At a time when photography is only a technique and an emerging art, the family portrait is particularly in vogue in painting.
The dark clothes of the woman and children, although enhanced with white lace collar and shirt, refer to the recent mourning probably of the wife’s husband.
XIX century,
English school
Height: 73 cm
Width: 94 cm
