Game of children intent on harvesting grain (Allegory of Summer)

Mid-18th century

Oil on canvas

97 x 129 cm

Framed cm. 112 x 145

We present here a splendid painting, traditionally attributed to the French painter Étienne Jeaurat (Vermenton 1699 - Versailles 1789), depicting a jubilation of children.

The canons of the Rococo period are present here, the most delicate, light and at the same time elegant of styles, capable of interpreting in painting the peculiarities of French society of the Ancien Régime. Baroque painting with its exuberance, massive, rational forms, could not represent the aristocracy, which instead saw in luminosity, decorativism, grace and idyll a more prestigious and representative language.

The composition is, to be precise, taken from a painting by Boucher, painted around 1730 and now housed in the Museum of Fine Art in Huston (https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/18420/the-cherub-harvesters), which depicts a joyful group of cupids playfully engaged in the harvesting of wheat.

Prevalent in our canvas is the feeling of gracefulness, emphasised by the graceful poses of the children and the use of the palette, where the colours are light and luminous, enhancing the beautiful play of chiaroscuro, typical of painters of this period.

Jeaurat also devoted himself to this type of subject, symbol par excellence of the frivolous pleasures of life to which the aristocratic class yearned, certainly aware of the highly appreciated work of the contemporary Francois Boucher.

The work is in good condition, complemented by a beautiful lacquered and gilded wooden frame with leaf-carved corners.

Étienne Jeaurat (Vermenton 1699 - Versailles 1789) - Pupil of Nicolas Vleughels, friend of Antoine Watteau, in 1724 the painter stayed in Rome and returned to Paris, and in 1733 he was registered at the Royal Academy. In 1737, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Artistes in the Louvre where he continued to show his work regularly until 1789, was then elevated to professor and later chancellor in 1781. Returning to the work presented here, a similar composition, but of slightly larger dimensions, is in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, dated 1744.