The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, the Lapworth Museum of Geology and the University of Birmingham Collections - Objects
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ID number:  BIRBI-62.10
Institution:  The Barber Institute of Fine Arts
Artist / Maker:  Aubry, Étienne (1745-1781)
Title / Object name / Definition:  Paternal Love
Object type:  Painting
Place made:  Paris
Culture:  French
Date made:  Exhibited 1775
Materials:  Oil on canvas
Measurements:  78.7 x 101.6 cm
Provenance:  Comte d' Angiviller, 1775; perhaps Bailie McLellan, Glasgow; Alexander Cunninghame of Craigends, Renfrewshire; Helen Laura Pearson of Craigends; Christie's Auction House, London, 24 November 1961 (lot 17); Agnews Auction House, London; purchased by the Barber Institute, December 1962 for £5,300.
BIRBI-62.10.jpg

Description:  Three generations of a family gather around a humble hearth, forming an image of domestic happiness in a modest setting. When Aubry exhibited the work in 1775 it was praised for its naturalism - the depiction of a range of objects with great truth - but also for its positive influence as a ‘moral genre’. A domestic scene of a loving husband who provides for his wife and three strapping sons and supports his widowed father, it was argued, offers a striking lesson for the dissolute upper classes.

Notes:  Exhibited: Salon, Paris, 1775 (no.175); Summer Exhibition of Old Masters, Agnew's, London, 1962 (no. 4); Royal Academy of Arts, London, 'France in the Eighteenth Century', 1968 (no.4); Hamburg, 1977; 'The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard, Masterpieces of French Genre Painting', Ottawa, 2003 (no. 99).

Engraved: J.-C. Le Vasseur (died 1816).


1 Related Media Item



BIRBI-62.10.jpg
BIRBI-62.10.jpg


1 Related People & Organizations

Aubry, Étienne

4 Related Publications

Salons
Diderot, Denis

1967
Greuze: the rise and fall of an eighteenth-century phenomenon
Brookner, Anita

1972
Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France
Kalhein, Wend and Levey, Michael

1972
'Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in French Art'
Duncan, Carol

1973
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