RESTOUT, Jean II

The subject of this picture is taken from the Old testament (Gen. 18:1-19). While Abraham sat at the tent door in the middle of the day three men appeared before him. Realizing that they were angels he bowed down before them, fetched water and washed their feet; then with the traditional hospitality of the nomad he brought them food. The angels prophesied that a son would be born to Abraham’s wife Sarah. But Sarah laughed at the idea because by now they were old and ‘well stricken by age’. However she afterwards bore Isaac so the prophecy was fulfilled.

Jean Restout was one of the most famous French painters in the 18th century. This painting is a smaller version of a painting (now in the Louvre) commissioned by the Congregation of St Maurice for the Abbey Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s in Paris.

Ananias was a disciple of St Paul, living in Damascus. He learned through a vision that he was to go to Paul, who was blinded on the road to Damascus by a sudden light from heaven, and restore his sight by laying on hands. In the painting Paul is seen kneeling before Ananias. His armour lies beside him. The dove of the Holy Ghost hovers overhead. Another disciple brings the water needed for the baptism.

Jean Restout came of a family of painters and did many religious and mythological pictures, and worked for a time for Frederick the Great.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Johann Sebastian Bach: Komm, heiliger Geist, choral BWV 652

Jean Restout came of a family of painters and did many religious and mythological pictures, and worked for a time for Frederick the Great. This enormous canvas, a masterpiece of 18th-century religious painting, once adorned the refectory (dining room) of the Abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris. With its exaggerated view from below and the extreme perspective of the rows of columns to the left and right, the work is reminiscent of Baroque ceiling paintings.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Johann Sebastian Bach: Komm, heiliger Geist, choral BWV 652

This portrait of an architect (probably a pensionnaire at the Academy in Rome) was painted in Rome when Restout was in his last year as a pensionnaire at the Royal Academy. The occupation of the sitter is indicated by the traditional instruments associated with that profession. Restout’s vigorous handling of this subject, particularly evident in the face and hands, may be compared with Fragonard’s style in his famous fantasy portraits, admired by his contemporaries for their spontaneity.

This is probably a preliminary study for a larger composition.

Jean Restout had a tremendously successful career and he exercised an influence, through a long life, which links him to the revival of history painting as a school for morals and virtue in the later years of the eighteenth century.

The Death of St Scholastica, signed and dated 1730 was commissioned for a monastery at Bourgueil, not far from Tours, and is the companion picture to an Ecstasy of St Benedict. These two pictures represent an expressive extreme not often attempted by French art and best paralleled perhaps in some of Michel-Ange Slodtz’ sculpture, for example the St Bruno. Combined with the prominent, hypnotically detailed floorboards and observation of the wood grain of the desk, the collapsed figure of St Scholastica dissolves like a dying flame. Restout created a highly personal masterpiece.

Most of Restout’s contemporaries had to execute at least some religious paintings but, apart from Subleyras, none equalled his intense, artistic conviction.