This is a beautiful tribute to the painter who was born in 1700, and became one of the greatest painters of the eighteenth century. After receiving the Grand Prix in 1721, Natoire became a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1734, and was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome for the period between 1751 and 1775. His prestigious career made him a figure of authority in all artistic matters, and he gained particular fame for his excellent drawings and memorable tapestry cartoons.

This exhibition of 91 drawings was made possible thanks to an exceptional contribution from private and public collections, including the Musée du Louvre, and the Musée Atger in Montpellier. It makes an indispensible contribution to our understanding of Natoire’s working technique. Just like his contemporary François Boucher, Natoire was considered a painter of grace and elegance. In the eighteenth century, ‘grace’ referred to beauty in so far as it could appeal to the viewer’s heart, disregarding the concerns of the age for l’esprit et la raison. In Natoire, just as in Boucher’s paintings, beauty appears in drawings which illustrate the ideal of the serpentine line, in canvasses full of curves and arabesques, creating very sophisticated compositions, characteristic of the rococo manner. Indeed, Natoire’s line reflects a conviction that aesthetic contemplation should not merely be an intellectual exercise, but a profoundly pleasurable one.

The eighteenth century was also a time when drawing acquired a new dimension, as it sought to satisfy the taste of the rising middle classes. It no longer appeared as mere preparatory work for painting or for designing tapestries, instead becoming a work of art in its own right. Natoire participated in this evolution. After 1756, he turned to drawing exclusively, and embellished his creations with gouache and watercolour. This is particularly true for some of the works which made him famous, notably picturesque scenes of the Italian campagna near Rome, ruins and other classical compositions.

This summer, the Musée des Beaux-Arts has dedicated three rooms to Charles-Joseph Natoire, and the public can discover the artist’s characteristic techniques through his sketches, studies and watercolours. We follow his evolution as an artist, discovering his first nudes and other academic studies, and in the second and third rooms more sophisticated drawings and preparatory works for well-known canvasses. The painter explores the expressive qualities of red chalk, pen and ink, pierre noire and wash drawing, exploiting each specific medium’s potential.

The first nudes he drew demonstrate Natoire’s ability to execute powerful evocations of the human body, using red chalk for the body, pierre noire for the hair and eyes and white chalk to add depth to the figure. His sketches perfectly suited the aesthetic ideal of grace as an emanation of inner life popularised by André Félibien in his Conversations on the Lives and Works of the Most Excellent Ancient and Modern Painters (1666). There is harmony between the model’s physical appearance and the sentiments which the drawing aims to convey. It has little to do with classical beauty (which instead relies on symmetry and perfect proportion). Natoire’s use of line reveals his interest in the expressiveness of the body in its natural, languid resting position, while his application of pastel, especially in his head studies, seeks to enhance the psychological truth of the figure. In his Etude pour le Christ en Croix (1740), grace even takes on a mystical dimension.

As the years passed by, drawing became a way for Natoire to experiment with further chromatic effects and embellishments. In his most sophisticated compositions the sheer exuberance of his lines is striking. Such is the case in Psyché aux Enfers (1737-39) – one of Natoire’s favourite themes – and Orphée charmant les nymphes et les animaux, surely one of the highlights of the show. Indeed, the myth of Orpheus resonates readily with the artist’s own lyricism. The exhibition demonstrates above all how Natoire used drawing as a medium for exploration, a space of personal liberty, and of intimate creation.

However, although the exhibition provides good explanatory information on each work in French, there are regretfully no translations or audioguides to help foreign visitors. For more information on the work of Natoire, readers may turn to the exhaustive study recently published by Susanna Caviglia-Brunel, the curator of the exhibition: Charles-Joseph Natoire (Editions Arthena, 2012).