To the Editors:
In his stimulating review of the National Gallery’s Watteau exhibition, Jed Perl takes the design department of the Gallery to task for displaying the paintings against dark backgrounds, grey-green, grey-blue and grey-plum. He suggests that this is contrary to historical precedent and that “pale green or cream [would have been] more in line with period taste.”

The popular belief that dix-huitième taste leaned toward pale, even pastel, colours seems to have arisen quite late in the nineteenth century. Evidence of how paintings were hung in eighteenth-century France (or elsewhere) is scanty. But such as there is points in the opposite direction.

That it was impossible to hang paintings on the light-toned (Perl’s “cream”) panelling picked out with gold on elaborately carved moldings, was a constantly reiterated charge against the rococo style from its inception. A few...

 

A Message from the Editors

Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.

Popular Right Now