WILLIAMSTOWN, Massachusetts — After descending the steps on the Clark Artwork Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, guests are welcomed into the gallery area by a monumental copy of a harrowing scene from Roman antiquity: Lucius Junius Brutus presiding over his sons’ execution. The picture bears hallmarks of Neoclassical portray, from inflexible strains and classical structure to finely rendered statuesque figures. At first look, the portray feels prefer it might have been made by Jacques-Louis David, or maybe Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. It’s by neither; as a substitute, a not-so-familiar identify, Guillaume Lethière, is printed in capital letters in giant white textual content in opposition to a hanging crimson wall.
Lethière was one of the vital distinguished and influential figures in French portray through the late 18th and early Nineteenth centuries, charming worldwide audiences along with his technical precision, arresting portraiture, and grand-scale historical past work. He was born in Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe, a Caribbean archipelago and a colony of France because the third baby to a White, plantation-owning father and a previously enslaved mixed-race mom. On the early age of 14, he traveled to France along with his father, the place he obtained a prestigious artwork training and was finally accepted into the Royal Academy of Portray and Sculpture. All through his life, Lethière garnered success and recognition, profitable coveted awards and securing commissions from French royalty and Caribbean aristocracy alike, all amidst a backdrop of violence and revolution. Regardless of such accolades and recognition, Lethière fell into obscurity after his loss of life.
The Clark, in partnership with the Louvre, has undertaken the tall order of resurrecting Lethière’s legacy and restoring his rightful place within the mainstream artwork historic canon. That includes over 100 works, together with work, drawings, and prints (in addition to a considerable 432 web page monograph), this first-ever in-depth retrospective explores the artist’s intensive and achieved profession inside a fancy and turbulent sociopolitical context. Within the course of, it uncovers new insights about different undervalued artists and cultural figures, significantly individuals of shade, throughout the artist’s periphery.
The exhibition takes detours away from Lethière’s timeline to contextualize his story. One such digression introduces obscure figures inside Creole tradition and the advanced relationship between France and its colonies. His residence was, based on a Nineteenth-century author the exhibition supplies quote, “open to all Creoles,” a sentiment that curators characterize by showcasing a wide range of items by artists and cultural figures working in and across the Caribbean, together with his college students.
The broadness of the exhibition permits area for brand spanking new analysis findings that not solely draw Lethière out of obscurity, however lots of his contemporaries as properly. A self-portrait on view by Hortense Haudenbourt-Lescot, a mixed-race girl whom Lethière taught, as an example, emulates the identical air of defiance and confidence that her mentor captured in his portray of his daughter-in-law, Eugénie Servières. And whereas establishing provenance for Lethière’s work, curators got here throughout information of different notable however in any other case unknown or under-appreciated people, akin to François Fournier de Pescay, a distinguished mixed-race doctor in France nd Haiti, and Augustine Cochet de Saint-Omer, the artist who painted it.
Curators are eager to interweave Lethière’s biography with the political, social, and racial tumult that unfolded round him. Different detours, as an example, foreground the violence that permeated the time interval, specifically the French and Haitian Revolutions (1789–99 and 1791–1804). This motion between the artist and his higher sociopolitical context reinforces the importance of his means to navigate these fluctuating programs and nonetheless discover success. Lethière’s work as an abolitionist, as an example, is obvious within the present’s pièce de résistance, “Oath of the Ancestors” (1822). Although it was unable to be transported to the Clark on the time of the opening, a backlit copy stands as a replacement like an excellent beacon.
The portray depicts the alliance of Haiti’s founding revolutionaries in a second of triumph after securing independence and the abolition of slavery. Normal Alexandre Pétion, who’s mixed-race, and Normal Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who’s Black, attain for one another whereas stepping on discarded shackles, signaling the top of slavery. Regardless of the battle that persists within the background, Pétion and Dessalines direct their gaze upward to God, parting the darkish clouds with dazzling white gentle. Lethière signed this piece “g. Guillon Le Thiere born in Guadeloupe 1760” and organized for its covert transport to Haiti, which the curators consider evidences the artist’s connection to his birthplace, mixed-race heritage, and the politics of the revolution.
In some ways, the portray and its journey throughout the Atlantic underscore the significance of the exhibition’s throughline of sustaining connection to 1’s cultural heritage regardless of a backdrop of dueling nationwide pursuits. It additionally speaks to Lethière’s private journey — in any case, artwork was a pathway to his personal freedom. Whereas born into enslavement, Lethière’s accomplishments inspired his father to legally acknowledge him as his progeny and heir of his property in 1799. And although Lethière’s existence has thus far been ignored of the dominant narrative of the lengthy Nineteenth century, his creative contributions and assist of the abolitionist trigger have made him a celebrated determine in Haiti to today: His identify and picture are immortalized in the whole lot from road indicators to public artwork.
It’s not unusual to see up to date artwork exhibitions centralize discussions of race with flashy taglines and buzzwords. Establishments, nonetheless, bear a accountability to strolling the road between performativity and consciousness. The Clark does so properly, presenting an eloquent and thought-provoking retrospective, analyzing the impression of Lethière’s racial heritage inside a much wider social and political context. It champions his legacy as an artist, educator, and cultural determine, whereas emphasizing that his reemergence into the general public consciousness can’t be distilled to simply his race — it should be obtained within the full context of his life. All through his creative profession, Lethière straddled two worlds at odds: Regardless of his ongoing relationship with the French aristocracy, he maintained connection to his mixed-race heritage and abolitionism, which was in direct opposition to the Bonapartes’ choice to reinstate slavery. This exhibition does properly in re-illuminating figures, tales, and artworks that had been as soon as misplaced to time.
Guillaume Lethière continues on the Clark Artwork Institute (225 South Road, Williamstown, Massachusetts) via October 14, earlier than debuting on the Musée du Louvre, Paris in November. The exhibition was organized by Esther Bell, Olivier Meslay, Sophie Kerwin, and Marie-Pierre Salé.