LEPRINCE'S THE VISIT

The Visit

LEPRINCE’S THE VISIT

by Joan K. Yanni

A combination of a landscape and a genre scene, Jean-Baptiste Leprince’s The Visit, (77.102) on view in the 18th-century gallery, is an example of the best in the artist’s work. Painted just two years before his death, it combines his facility in landscape with his remarkably detailed genre scenes.

The most important element in the painting is a huge tree rather than the people meeting in its shade. The landscape in the background, with its winding roads, stream, animals, castle and peasant dwellings, represents the ideal

in 18^th-century French painting: a departure from the frivolity of the Rococo painter Boucher and a return to the style and subject matter of the Dutch landscapists. It shows a moment in the daily life of people living on an estate in France.

The scene pictures the visit of nobles to a peasant family with a new baby. The nobles, dressed in fine clothes and on horseback, have come from the castle on the far right. The new mother is nursing her baby under the tree, while her husband sits on the ground at her feet. The child’s bassinette is being carried on the side of a donkey at the left of the group, while a loyal dog rests on the right side of the couple.

The tree dominating the painting illustrates Leprince’s principles of design as set forth in a treatise he wrote for the French Academy in 1773. He advised an artist who is painting nature to work from the detail to the whole, to proceed from a single leaf to a cluster, then to the mass of the tree, last to the direction of branches. He notes that a tree appears different at various distances. For example, a detailed leaf represents a tree close at hand, while at a distance only the “spirit,” which eliminates detail, can be shown.  He also advises that when working from nature, the painter should work for only two hours or less because the sun moves, changing the shadows and mass of the subject. If necessary to finish the work, the painter should return the next day at the same time to complete the look already on the canvas. Unlike the Impressionists, Leprince is aiming for a picture of  permanence and stability in his work rather then the fleeting moment. The variable here is not light, but distance from the object.

Leprince (1734-1781) was born in Metz, France, to a family of master-sculptors and gilders who had worked in the region around Rouen. When he was twelve he was sent to study with a local artist. Even at this early age he was impatient.  After a few years he decided he could do far better in Paris than in Metz, so he asked the governor of Metz for patronage and, having received it, accompanied the governor to Paris and went to study with the influential François Boucher. Always ambitious, he soon married a very rich woman twice his age and set about spending her money. The wife was displeased and the marriage a failure. Leprince went then to Italy, producing drawings of ruins for an amateur engraver. 

   His drawings showed little originality, for he was not captivated by the neo-classic. From these he turned to genre scenes. Though his work was pleasing and colorful, he had not yet found a theme that captured his attention.  In 1758, on his way to join his brothers in St. Petersburg where they were employed as musicians, he stopped in Holland to study the work of Dutch and Flemish masters. Their influence can be seen in his later work. Once in Russia, he finally found subjects that appealed to his imagination. He remained here for several years traveling and sketching the native peasant life. His reputation in Russia grew, but though he found the scenery and life in Russia to his liking, the climate did not agree with him. He returned to Paris with detailed drawings of customs and costumes he had seen on his travels there and would use them in his work in France.

On his return to France he published several sets of etchings which he used to get the attention of the Academy. These were created in 1768, using Leprince’s new formula for aquatint. Though Leprince claimed its invention, it has also been attributed to others. Whoever had invented it,  Leprince was a pioneer in its use.

He soon presented himself as a candidate to the French Academy and was received as a member in 1764. His reception piece was The Russian Baptism. It was shown at the salon that year along with several paintings of his Russian themes including a view of St. Petersburg, a party of Cossacks returning from a raid, a Russian pastorale and a landscape with figures in different costumes.

In his paintings he continued to use Russian landscapes,  with Russian costumes in his genre scenes. The French shepherds he had formerly painted turned into Russian peasants watching over real sheep and goats. His exotic costumes and unusual settings created a demand for his pictures. His Russian subjects were unique because they were not painted realistically, but in pastel hues--Rococo Russians presented by an artist who was trained under the master Boucher.

In 1773 Leprince read a treatise to the Academy on  the subject of landscape with four volumes of four plates, each illustrating  “Principles of Design.” His principles are based on a study from nature and have been described earlier.  Many seem self-evident, but they gained him acclaim.  Two years after presenting his treatise to the Academy, he bought a house in the region of Lagny. Though he exhibited eight landscapes at the salon of 1777, he was by then very ill. He died in 1781.

Though Leprince’s reputation in art history has long been based on his Russian genre scenes, his work in landscape may have been just as important   He embraced the tradition of landscape then taking shape,  showing an appreciation of the outdoors, fresh air, walks in the country, and the skies and light of France.

Source: Rémy Saisselin, “Leprince Landscape,” Porticus, Vol. II, 1979; “Jean -Baptiste Leprince,” The Memorial Art Gallery: An Introduction to the Collection; The Grove Dictionary of Art