Nicholas-Antoine TAUNAY (French, 1755-1830)

A Side-Show in a Park in Paris, with a Performance of the Commedia dell'Arte

Oil on panel; 11x 8 inches / 2.3 x 20.4 cm.

This picture is datable to circa 1792. Taunay's artistic interests were wide, embracing landscape painting, genre, history and even eroticism. But it was his interest in social realism in the aftermath of the revolution that produced subjects such as carnivals and side-shows or charlatans preaching to crowds, in which there is a restrained echo of the gritty subjects produced half a century earlier by Hogarth in England. Taunay was clearly keen to contrast the artifice of the Commedia dell'arte with the richness of real-life before them. Beyond is the Conciergerie where Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned - probably an ironic reference to Louis XVI's hatred and suppression of the Commedia dell'arte who had frequently lampooned him.