Oil painting, 'Cupids Playing', Attributed to Piat Joseph Sauvage, Flemish,1780s

A company of putti is playing with flowers while on the far left a putto is turning a brazier upside down.

Given by Henry James King

Given by Henry James King, 1911

Historical significance: This painting is a good example of Sauvage's grisaille paintings, a category of which he was the foremost exponent in France during the late 18th century. His compositions often draw from classical low-reliefs or contemporary sculptures however the precise model of this painting, if any, has not been identified.
E.1098-1911 shows a company of putti playing with flowers, on the far left a putto is turning a brazier upside down and was probably placed over a door. This type of composition is typical of the Netherlandish decorative paintings from the late 18th century, which developed under the influence of French Rococo. Often called witjes in reference to the leading figure in this category, Jacob de Wit (1695-1754), these pieces usually show small figures placed in a mythological and allegorical context.
Sauvage, who was a Flemish painter, probably drew from these compositions to develop his own successful style in France. Comparable grisaille can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Infant Bacchanal, 1780s (Inv. 07.225.314b) and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Putti leading a Goat by a Chain of Flowers (Inv. 1942-90-2) and Putti Playing with Birds (Inv. 1942-90-1). The museum holds two similar grisaille by another representative exponent of this genre: Hendrik Willem Schweickhardt (see 559-1882 and 560-1882).

Grisaille is a term applied to monochrome painting carried out mostly in shades of grey. The use of the French word can be traced only to 1625, although grisaille painting was done in preceding centuries. The origin of monochrome figure painting is to be found in Italian wall painting such as Giotto's painted the stone-coloured allegories of the Virtues and Vices, conceived as statues facing each other in fictive niches on the walls of the nave in the Arena Chapel in Padua (1303-06). The allegories, subordinated by their stone quality to the coloured (and therefore more lifelike) figures in the scenes from the History of Salvation, have nonetheless the highest degree of reality within the picture programme because of their illusionist presentation.
Grisaille painting increasingly appeared in thematically or formally subordinated areas, however the explicit imitation of stone continued to play an important role. In the large fresco programmes of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries grisaille helped to spread illusionism to painting in colour. Michelangelo's polychrome prophets and sibyls (1508-12) on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome for example are placed between grisaille figures appearing like reliefs or caryatids on pilasters and are thrust by them into the beholder's space. The case is similar with Annibale Carracci's frescoes (1597-1600) of the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome or Paolo Veronese's wall paintings (1561-2) in the Villa Barbaro in Maser.

Piat-Joseph Sauvage (1744-1818) was a Flemish painter who trained at Antwerp under the supervision of J. Geraerts and G. van Spaendonk. He was in Paris by 1774 and enjoyed there a great success, specialising in trompe-l’oeil and grisaille paintings. He became a member of the Académie Royale in 1783.

This work is a typical example of Netherlandish decorative paintings, which developed at the end of the 18th century under the influence of the French Rococo. It shows a company of putti playing with flowers and imitates classical low-relief in trompe-l’oeil. This painting was probably used as an overdoor decoration.

E.1098-1911