Interiority, intimacy and domesticity: genre painting in 18th century France

• Grant number: 23/17977-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: March 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Plastic Arts
• Principal Investigator: Sônia Salzstein Goldberg
• Grantee: Beatrice Frudit
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate scenes of domestic interiors in French genre painting of the mid-eighteenth century, focusing on the analysis and critical discussion around the representation of female figures in a series of paintings by Chardin, Greuze, Boucher and Fragonard, that depict scenes of work, care for children, individual leisure and games of flirtation and female coquetry. In the constitution of a domestic imaginary turned to individuality and intimacy, we can observe an intricate association between the domestic universe and the feminine. We seek to question to what extent the emergence of this imaginary, even prior to the constitution of the image of a public sphere, is tied to an emerging bourgeois culture entangled by Enlightenment ideals. Our goal is to understand how the representation of female figures in eighteenth-century genre painting gave shape to a model of affection and sensitivity "naturally" installed within the family. This research departs from the study of Chardin's work in order to establish comparisons with paintings by other artists; specially, we will confront the serious and absorbed female figures of Chardin's paintings with the representation of the femme coquette in Boucher's paintings and with the moralizing female figures in Greuze's scenes of the intimate sphere and the family. We also seek to establish relationships between the artistic and critical interest in domestic scenes and the discourses on intimacy and femininity in the nascent world of culture, especially in the context of the Salons, public exhibitions the Louvre, where a new debate about the moral, political and aesthetic meaning of art was taking place.