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| The Rebuke of Adam and Eve |
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| François Le Moyne, "Adam and Eve," oil on copper (private collection) |
Artist:Charles Joseph Natoire (French, Nîmes 1700–1777 Castel Gandolfo)
Date:1740
Medium:Oil on copper
Dimensions:26 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (67.9 x 50.2 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Frank E. Richardson III, George T. Delacorte Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Heinz II Gifts; Victor Wilbour Memorial, Marquand, and The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Funds; and The Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection, Edward J. Gallagher Jr. Bequest, 1987
Accession Number:1987.279
Natoire was trained in the studio of François Le Moyne (1688–1737). He won the Prix de Rome and studied in Italy. This picture must have been intended by the younger artist as a tribute to his teacher. It is a pendant to a painting by Le Moyne depicting Adam receiving the forbidden fruit from Eve in the Garden of Eden (private collection). Natoire shared with Le Moyne a predilection for the nude, here depicting with care the rosy and sensual body of the disappointed Eve, a tear glistening on her cheek.
Catalogue Entry
In 1717 Charles Joseph Natoire settled in Paris and within two or three years both he and François Boucher (1703–1770) were to be found in the studio of the academician François Le Moyne (1688–1737). Natoire won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1721 and spent four years at the French academy there. He and Boucher were received into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1734, and attained the rank of Professor in 1737. They were friends and rivals, both extremely successful, and they occasionally collaborated, for example on the decoration of the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris. However, while Boucher eventually succeeded as first painter to the King, Natoire was appointed in 1751 to the directorship of the French academy in Rome, which, while a prestigious position, left him with little time for his own work, increasingly isolated, and in the end forgotten in France by the court and the public alike. In fact, he was among the most gifted painters and draftsmen of the French Rococo.
In 1737, Le Moyne died, and in 1740 Natoire signed and dated this painting on copper of The Expulsion from Paradise. It was surely intended as a tribute to Le Moyne, and seems in fact to have been a pendant to a painting of the same size, on copper, by Le Moyne, depicting Adam receiving the forbidden fruit from Eve in the Garden of Eden (private collection; see fig. 1 above). Natoire shared with his teacher a profound knowledge of Italian painting and a predilection for the nude, especially the rosy and sensual body of the disappointed Eve, a tear glistening on her cheek. Adam supplicates, but his angry God casts them out with an emphatic gesture. Copper is a stable support and the modeled strokes and delicate colors survive much as they must have appeared originally.
Katharine Baetjer 2014
Copyright Image
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