Thence to Hyde Park, Where Much Good Company, and Many Fine Ladies 1930

Editor: Here we have Jean Dupas's 1930 work, "Thence to Hyde Park, Where Much Good Company, and Many Fine Ladies," made with drawing and acrylic paint, portraying a very stylish scene of leisure. I'm immediately struck by how mannered everyone seems. It feels very posed, almost theatrical. What's your read on this? Curator: "Mannered," I love that. It's like they're performing being at leisure, right? Dupas has really captured that slightly hollow, gilded age feeling, the calm before the storm, you know? The 1930s…it’s got one foot in the roaring twenties, and the other, well…things are about to get heavy. I see these elongated figures and their attenuated grace, almost like art deco playing out on a stage in a park. Don't you think that intense green, almost glowing, pushes the scene towards the unreal? Editor: It does. The unnatural coloring gives the drawing a dreamlike atmosphere that is intensified by the formal poses. It's like we're peeking into an imagined past. I wonder what Dupas wanted to convey? Nostalgia? Criticism? Curator: Or maybe he just really liked elegant people in parks! Seriously though, think about the title, pulled directly from Samuel Pepys’ diary. He’s intentionally referencing another era obsessed with spectacle and social performance. He's inviting us to see the parallels, the continuities in human behavior despite the changing costumes. But perhaps also, and here’s the key – that slight hint of falseness; even Pepys wasn’t *always* entirely honest, was he? So maybe Dupas is acknowledging how hard it is to ever truly *know* what someone means? Editor: That's fascinating, framing it as a knowing wink about appearances. I’ll definitely look at this drawing differently now! Curator: Exactly! It's about embracing that beautiful ambiguity. Maybe that’s what makes this art so…enduringly fascinating, you know? The unanswered question is often the most interesting part.