Delices de la Campagne 1818

Curator: Taking a closer look at "Delices de la Campagne" or "Delights of the Countryside" as we might say in English, by Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, dating from around 1818. This lithograph currently resides here in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What are your first thoughts? Editor: Oh, I am immediately transported. There is such a light touch in the linework. A wistful beauty, caught in a suspended moment of perhaps shared secrets or stolen glances. They are lost in a country daydream. Curator: Absolutely. Vivant Denon, while also a diplomat, was also Director of the Louvre Museum under Napoleon, deeply involved in shaping public taste and collections. Lithography allowed for relatively easy reproduction, making art accessible to a wider audience than ever before. It democratized imagery. Editor: Democratization through art, a tempting thought! But looking at their refined features and fashionable attire, I see ladies who are comfortably isolated. The pleasure of the countryside offered to very few at that time. Do you not find them romantic but slightly sad? Curator: That contrast is key, I think. The artwork’s context reveals those contradictions. As a genre painting executed in the Romantic style it depicts a fleeting moment. In many ways, the figures here serve as symbols of longing, of a dream-like escape from industrializing cityscapes into a purified pastoral life. Of course, the vision of rural peace comes with complex social implications. Editor: Right, that curated dream glosses over the real, back-breaking labour sustaining this idyll. So it is less "delights" and more like "carefully constructed illusion". Even the medium – lithography - has a certain deceptive ease. A trick of the eye! Curator: Precisely. Denon plays with surface and depth, both visually and thematically, hinting at the complex relationships that frame this simple-seeming countryside scene. Editor: Thinking about it now, their quiet elegance almost challenges the rustic background. The reality behind the Romantic movement begins to surface, it’s lovely and deceiving! Curator: A dance of light and shadow, both literally in the print and figuratively in its commentary. Editor: Exactly. A truly provoking picture. I can think about their reality but still get caught up in that sense of beauty, of escape and stolen delights.