The park in Mortefontaine 1806

Curator: Here we have Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld's "The park in Mortefontaine", an oil on canvas painted in 1806. Editor: It’s just so wonderfully…still. Like a preserved moment, slightly surreal, yet calm. Like a fancy dollhouse about to set sail on a mirror. Curator: Indeed. This work encapsulates the emerging Romantic sensibility grafted onto Neoclassical techniques. If we examine the surface, it's remarkable how Bidauld builds up texture in layers to describe foliage and capture the water's reflection. There is very sharp linear perspective mixed with this embrace of looser paint handling when looking at individual aspects of this environment, such as water or foliage. Editor: Those figures embarking look a bit stiff, almost pasted on. Like the boat itself could be an out-of-scale model, a quirky toy someone actually managed to float. Curator: Considering the period and social setting—a wealthy park—it reflects a desire to show social hierarchy and power over the physical and natural world, expressed through both the figures but especially through such carefully constructed machinery as this vessel itself. I believe this approach of portraying leisure becomes something manufactured. Editor: But aren't most representations a manufactured idea in some way, however loose our relation is with their rendering? Still, I get that "sterile" quality now, almost photographic, though years before photographs. Even those swans are eerily posed. Everything here seems optimized, managed to convey leisure with some labor. Curator: Bidauld here skillfully balances themes we associate with the Age of Enlightenment, the objective recording and analyzing the world—with those of the rising Romantic era, with the sensitivity towards sentiment and aesthetics in an approach reflecting the socio-economic status afforded only the bourgeoisie. It’s both fascinating and incredibly contrived, which is probably the intention behind these representations, offering what they think is beauty. Editor: I find this contrived sense beautiful in its uncanny valley way! Now, what a way to see and be seen; all onboard for this peculiar water escapade.