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| The Golden Age |
Artist:Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater (French, Valenciennes 1695–1736 Paris)
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:6 3/8 x 9 in. (16.2 x 22.9 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982
In the eighteenth century, attention was given to the joys of unspoiled childhood, a golden age. Here the elegantly dressed little girls play with stick horses and a pinwheel.
Catalogue Entry
The picture is first recorded in 1766, in the Paris house of the wealthy collector and connoisseur Ange Laurent de La Live de Jully (1725–1779). It was one of a pair, described as "Deux petits tableaux sur bois, de Jean-Baptiste Pater, représentans des Jeux d'enfans," or "two little pictures on wood, by Jean-Baptiste Pater, representing children's games." Pater died in 1736, so La Live de Jully cannot have commissioned the works, but he must have admired them particularly, as he engraved them himself, under the title L'Âge d'or. Sold as a single lot in 1770, the two were separated thereafter. The other painting seems to have reappeared in the 1822–23 Paris sale of the late Robert de Saint-Victor, where it is described as a group of children with a little girl riding in a cart shaped like a cradle and pulled by two dogs, a description which accords with La Live de Jully's engraving. The painting has never since reappeared. The subjects were not replicated.
The present work, in an exceptionally fine state of preservation, is unusual for Pater in at least three respects: it is very small, on panel, and depicts children only. Four elegantly dressed small girls, two of them with fine silk stockings, are engaged with their toys. One wears a feathered cap, two are playing with stick horses, and a fourth holds up a windmill pinwheel, also mounted on a stick, to the breeze. They are accompanied by three younger boys, the one in the foreground doing a somersault, and a spotted dog.
Katharine Baetjer 2010
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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