{"id":3761,"date":"2024-07-16T11:02:28","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T11:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/richardkarty.org\/view\/?p=3761"},"modified":"2024-08-19T10:35:07","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T10:35:07","slug":"lethiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardkarty.org\/view\/lethiere\/","title":{"rendered":"I look at art so you don’t have to! – Guillaume Lethi\u00e8re at the Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oy, so much art out there, who has the time? This was a really good exhibition at the Clark in Massachusetts, co-organized with the Louvre, that I highly recommend on a mixed-race artist from Guadeloupe named Guillaume Lethi\u00e8re (1750-1832) who was one of the most successful and prominent painters in Napoleonic France and since then has been almost completely forgotten in except in the Caribbean. They also had a few works by other creoles along with paintings by white French-mainland artists of creoles who were prominent in French and Haitian history. This Caribbean-mainland French world should have been the main focus instead of just a minor addition to a Lethi\u00e8re solo exhibition because the fact is he’s just not that good a painter. It would have been plenty to include him as just one among many creole artists.<\/p>\n

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Oath of the Ancestors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His only truly memorable painting, at least in this show, was Oath of the Ancestors<\/em> (1822), one of the most important artworks in the history of Haiti, which depicts the country’s first emperor and president, respectively, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre P\u00e9tion.<\/p>\n

Mostly he painted scenes like these from French history and ancient Greece and Rome in an academic style which brought him the highest acclaim and important posts as director of academies.<\/p>\n