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"THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS"
Jean-Baptiste Mallet

Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard
14 rue Jean Ossola, 06130 Grasse
04 93 36 02 07

Free entrance

JEAN-BAPTISTE MALLET, FEATURED IN FRANCE'S FOREMOST MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

The exhibition's curator Carole Blumenfeld approached numerous fellow curators to discuss the prospect of a major monographic show. They enthusiastically agreed to open up their collections. For the very first time, this exhibition will be enjoying loans from nine renowned institutions: the Louvre, Museum of Decorative Arts, Cognacq-Jay and Carnavalet museums in Paris, together with the Dieppe castle-museum, Château de Pau national museum, Thomas Henry Museum in Cherbourg, Provence Art and History Museum in Grasse and Fabre Museum in Montpellier. These numerous museums harbor little-known works by the painter that visitors to Grasse can look forward to discovering this summer.

Jean-Baptiste Mallet, The Hymen, circa 1810, oil on canvas, 32.5 x 40.5 cm, Montpellier, Musée Fabre

When the Jean-Honoré Fragonard Museum opened its doors ten years ago, Jean-Baptiste Mallet was still a relatively unknown painter. Since then, time has weaved its magic. Numerous curators and art historians have visited the museum, where around thirty of Mallet's works are on show including the disturbing Madam Duchess of Angoulême at the grave of her parents, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Among recent acquisitions, Innocence and Loyalty Bringing Back Love and The Sleepwalker have also considerably revamped the Grasse painter's image in the eyes of period specialists. In turn, the Cognacq-Jay museum in 2015, Fabre museum in 2017 and Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018 all acquired works by Mallet: proof indeed of the interest now sparked by Mallet among the research community. The fruit of two years' work, this monographic exhibition should significantly change public perception of the painter, by demonstrating the close attention he paid to social and political issues throughout his career. When Mallet – born in Grasse two years before Marguerite Gérard – arrived in Paris, nothing could have foretold his future career. In 1783, he began studying at the studio of Toulon-born artist Simon Julien, approved by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. He soon realized that genre painting, unlike historical painting, was synonymous with freedom. His first known works are lighthearted subjects painted in gouache "adapted to the latest taste", together with a scattering of etchings that allowed him to gain an insight into the engraving trade. Nevertheless, he struggled to "find himself " until the early 1790s. He became a painter, draftsman and even engraver of the personal upheavals that marked the revolutionary period, as depicted in The Departure of the Volunteer and The Republican Divorce. His embroiderers and fashion sellers of yesteryear suddenly embraced the revolutionary times. Through his gouache paintings showing young women who had just given birth among ancient ruins, mothers teaching basic education to toddlers dressed in rags, and priests celebrating christenings in palaces displaying dramatic traces of bygone splendor, Mallet captured the mood of a generation of art lovers who had fled events in France. His efforts brought him little financial reward, but Mallet understood that in order to exist, an artist must convey a message. Highly attentive to the issues of piety and religion, his 1797 work Natural Cult, portraying the Theophilanthropy sect, which he designed and engraved himself, met with great success. The work's very wide circulation and the trouble it brought him after the sect was banned allowed him to definitively make a name for himself. From then on, in particular under the Empire, the artist used his relationships of trust and friendship to move forward on a path mapped out to meet his aspirations. His close ties with the artist Prud’hon, especially, inspired him to innovate.

Mallet tried his hand at several antique-style compositions coveted in the 1790s, prompted by his lengthy collaboration with Jean-Frédéric Ostervald. His research gained depth in the middle of the following decade, lending his subjects a contemporary air. He was particularly preoccupied with the concerns of French women: their love of freedom and fear of losing it in those troubled times.
One of his most daring series portrays variations on the day and night occupations of a naked Venus, adorned with very modern attire and set in an a sumptuous, state-of-the-art interior: Levee, Timorous, Success, Cards, Bath, Sleepwalker, Ablutions before the wedding, Day after the wedding, etc. Under the Consulate, the painter also explored the outlines of "anecdotal" painting, borrowing the seduction of the Dutch school from his peers Drölling and Bilcoq.
He dazzled with such spectacular works as The Gothic Bathroom presented at the Paris Art Fair in 1810, now at Dieppe castle, or The Education of Henri IV commissioned by Louis XVIII, now at Pau castle. The return of the Bourbons was celebrated by the artist in 1814 with his Madam Duchess of Angoulême at the grave of her parents, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (Jean-Honoré Fragonard Museum, Grasse) a scene all of Paris would have loved to attend. The fascination exerted by the "Orphan of the Temple", freed in 1797 and now the Duchess of Angoulême and hence future Queen of France, was at its height. Mallet strived to show his allegiance to the new regime, in particular Jean-Baptiste Mallet, The Hymen, circa 1810, oil on canvas, 32.5 x 40.5 cm, Montpellier, Musée Fabre 120 ADMIRE ADMIRE 121 The exhibition's curator Carole Blumenfeld approached numerous fellow curators to discuss the prospect of a major monographic show. They enthusiastically agreed to open up their collections. For the very first time, this exhibition will be enjoying loans from nine renowned institutions: the Louvre, Museum of Decorative Arts, Cognacq-Jay and Carnavalet museums in Paris, together with the Dieppe castle-museum, Château de Pau national museum, Thomas Henry Museum in Cherbourg, Provence Art and History Museum in Grasse and Fabre Museum in Montpellier. These numerous museums harbor little-known works by the painter that visitors to Grasse can look forward to discovering this summer.
JEAN-BAPTISTE MALLET, FEATURED IN FRANCE'S FOREMOST MUSEUM COLLECTIONS by painting two allegories in the revolutionary taste but marked with the very-explicit words: "Rise up joyful France, your forehead adorned with the Diadem of Clovis" and "France wailed
under a dreadful Despotism".
Like many, Mallet was keen to celebrate the great figures of French history.
He dreamed up a host of subjects paying homage to filial piety or the tranquil interiors of Pieter de Hooch and Jan Steen, highly acclaimed by the Parisian art market. His shift towards more contemporary figures only occurred once the Restoration was well established and Mallet became an ambassador of highly conservative values, far removed from his débuts. Although he never managed to equal his fellow Grasse-born countryman Jean-Honoré Fragonard or friend Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, with whom he is often too-easily compared, his work is nevertheless of twofold interest.

This summer, historians of the intimate will discover the explorations of royalty, religion, and maternal and romantic love of a man who celebrated his thirtieth birthday in 1789. Art historians will be astonished by the career of this industrious man rewarded by stubbornness, who produced his most powerful works at the age of 50 and even 60, when his path finally crossed that of art lovers who believed in his talent; they contributed at least as much to Mallet's recognition as the patience and hard work of an artist born outside the "club", who consistently struggled to make a living from his paintings. Part of the great charm of Mallet's oeuvre is the mischievous humor – highly appreciated by the public – it conceals.
Mallet's paintings, a feast of subtle Easter eggs dotted with encoded messages and pictorial spoonerisms, never fail to arouse curiosity and wonder...









 

Jean-Baptiste Mallet, The Sleepwalker, circa 1810, oil on canvas, 27 x 21.5 cm, Grasse, Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hélène & Jean-François Costa Collection →
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