Painters and Public Patronage in the First French Republic: the Ministry of the Interior and the Art of the French Revolution

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

David Wisner

Published:

2000

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan UK

At the salon of 1798, the French painter Louis Lafitte exhibited a large sketch of Pericles awarding Prizes to Artists before the Odeon in Athens. Hopeful of obtaining a public commission through the agency of the Ministry of the Interior, Lafitte sought vainly to inspire the Revolutionary authorities to award his work a prize. The subject of the sketch no doubt had something to do with the artist’s relationship with important figures in the French theatre, such as Marie-Joseph Chénier, whose portraits he also painted. More importantly, Lafitte later claimed that his work was the fruit of an unwritten agreement with a Minister of the Interior, Pierre Bénézech, to produce a painting for the State. In his correspondence with the Ministry, Lafitte mentions that his enormous composition (3×4 metres) was initially meant to serve as a design for a curtain at the Théâtre Français, but had remained uncompleted owing to the painter’s poor health and a lack of support for the project. Lafitte ultimately felt compelled to write to a subsequent Minister of the Interior, Nicolas François de Neufchâteau, to plead his case: Pericles is already distributing prizes and I await the first penny of mine in order to paint the crowns… You will recall Pericles in the French Odeon, Phydias and Zeuxis in our museums, in aiding in the efforts of young artists.

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