Drawing of first half of 19th Century of a young woman and a child with a vine crown. She is holding a Greek terracotta vase with a palm leaf motif. Neoclassical French School. Coal, pencil, watercolour and white pastel highlights. Nineteenth century frame in good condition (see photos). Unsigned.
Neoclassicism was a widespread and influential movement in painting and the other visual arts that began in the 1760s, reached its height in the 1780s and ’90s, and lasted until the 1840s and ’50s. In painting, it generally took the form of an emphasis on austere linear design in the depiction of classical themes and subject matter, using archaeologically correct settings and costumes.
Neoclassicism arose partly as a reaction against the sensuous and frivolously decorative Rococo style that had dominated European art from the 1720s on. But an even more profound stimulus was the new and more scientific interest in classical antiquity that arose in the 18th century. Neoclassicism was given great impetus by new archaeological discoveries, particularly the exploration and excavation of the buried Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (the excavations of which began in 1738 and 1748, respectively). And from the second decade of the 18th century on, a number of influential publications by Bernard de Montfaucon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Comte de Caylus, Robert Wood and German scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Artist: Pierre Georges Diéterle (1844-1937).
Signed in lower left corner.
Medium: Oil on board.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 32 x 41 cm. / 12 1/2 x 16 in.
Frame: 47.2 x 56 cm. / 18 1/2 x 22 in. Original. Gilt wood, carved. Very good condition.
Origin: France.