Design for a Firescreen with Picnic Scene and Playing Cards 1750 - 1799

Editor: Here we have Eugène Charpentier's "Design for a Firescreen with Picnic Scene and Playing Cards," made sometime between 1750 and 1799, using watercolor and coloured pencil. The scene feels surprisingly…staged. Almost like a commentary on leisure. How do you interpret this work? Curator: I see a powerful tension, reflecting the shifting social landscape of the late 18th century. What appears as leisurely pastoral—the picnic, the playing cards—is meticulously constructed. It’s a performance. Think about the rise of the bourgeoisie during this period. Editor: A performance, you say? Curator: Absolutely. What is being performed, and for whom? The elaborate detail, the rococo style, the very design of this for a firescreen... it all speaks to the display of wealth and refinement, carefully constructed to signal social status and access, but also hiding something. The French revolution wasn’t that far off…what repressions might be enacted here? Editor: Repressions? In a picnic scene? Curator: Consider the playing cards – are they merely a game, or a symbol of chance, risk, and perhaps even social mobility or downfall? Who is invited to this scene, and who is excluded? How does class and gender interplay here? Editor: It definitely gives me a lot to think about in terms of who had access to leisure and how it was portrayed. Thanks! Curator: It highlights the need to always look beyond the surface, to question whose stories are being told, and whose are being omitted from the canvas.