The first of five sun-struck pictures for the month of August is Summer by the French painter Nicholas Lancret. This light-hearted depiction of women bathing, was painted some time around 1719-21. It is one of a series of four paintings, showing the different seasons of the year, commissioned from the artist by the voracious art collector and member of the Academie Francaise, Leriget de la Faye. The works were originally displayed in Leriget’s house on the Rue de Sevres, in Paris, where, according to one biographer, “he assembled a rich collection of paintings, engraved stones, bronzes, marbles, porcelains, and a valuable library… which he made accessible to all, to the curiosity-seeker as well as to scholars.” Lancret’s Four Seasons were dispersed after Leriget’s death. Nowadays curiosity-seekers and scholars will have to travel to Russia to see Summer, which is in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Nicholas Lancret was born in 1690 and studied painting in the studio of Claude Gillot, a decorative and genre painter who was also director of costumes and decoration at the Paris Opera, as well as the first artist to produce pictures showing scenes from the commedia dell’arte. Lancret’s reputation has been overshadowed by that of another of Gillot’s students, Antoine Watteau, who developed his master’s early essays in genre painting into a quite new form of picture known as the fete galante, showing elegant people taking their leisure in parks or gardens, amid trees and ornamental statuary, mingling with musicians or actors from the troupe of the commedia. In his youth Lancret was deeply influenced by the works of Watteau, six years his senior; and their example would inspire him throughout his career. As a result, he has been placed in the damning category of “follower...
