It was a wonderful experience to see Guillaume Lethière’s work at the Clark Art Institute this month with a few of my favorite people. What an impressive exhibition! It will be at the institute until October 14, 2024. After this, the show will travel to the Musée du Louvre in Paris and will be on view there from November 13, 2024, to February 17, 2025. The Clark is located at 225 South Street, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Now, I am delighted to delve into Lethière’s work with the beautiful tome—Guillaume Lethière— a “groundbreaking publication on the Caribbean-born French Neoclassical painter [. . .] and his extraordinary, yet largely unexamined career.” It is a beautifully crafted gem of a book. [Also see our previous post Exhibition: Guillaume Lethière.]
Description: Born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, Guillaume Lethière (1760–1832) was a key figure in the history of art during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The son of a formerly enslaved woman of color and a white government official and plantation owner, Lethière moved to France with his father at age fourteen. He trained as an artist and successfully navigated the tumult of the French Revolution and its aftermath in order to achieve the highest levels of recognition in his time. A favorite artist of Napoleon’s brother, Lucien Bonaparte, Lethière also held important positions at the Académie de France in Rome, Institut de France, and École des Beaux-Arts. A well-respected teacher, he operated a robust studio that rivaled those of his contemporaries Jacques-Louis David and Antoine-Jean Gros.
Despite his remarkable accomplishments and considerable corpus of paintings and drawings, Lethière is relatively unknown today. Lavishly illustrated and authoritative, this groundbreaking study serves to introduce Lethière to new and broader audiences and restore him to his rightful place as one of the most eminent artists of his generation. An international group of scholars offer the first comprehensive view of Lethière’s extraordinary career in its political, social, and art historical context, addressing issues of colonialism, slavery, and diaspora, as well as shedding new light on the presence and reception of Caribbean artists in France during this time.
Hardcover, 400 pages.
For purchasing information, see https://store.clarkart.edu/products/guillaume-lethiere-hardcover-shipping-june-15-2024
For more information on the exhibition, see https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/guillaume-lethiere
It was a wonderful experience to see Guillaume Lethière’s work at the Clark Art Institute this month with a few of my favorite people. What an impressive exhibition! It will be at the institute until October 14, 2024. After this, the show will travel to the Musée du Louvre in Paris and will be on
