A Studio in the Villa Medici, Rome
Joseph-Eugène Lacroix1835
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
New York, United States
French artists who won the Prix de Rome were given studios in which to live and work during their time spent in Rome. The Academie de France occupied the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio from 1803. Three artists are seen in this room, which is sparsely furnished with simple wooden chairs, work tables and workstands. Folding beds, which would have been set up at night, were probably stored in the daytime behind the blue striped curtain in the right foreground. Paintings, plaster casts and portfolios are placed around the room. A pair of pistols mounted on a pedestal was carried for protection during sketching expeditions. A snake and a tortoise, presumably pets, are in open view.
- Title: A Studio in the Villa Medici, Rome
- Creator: Joseph-Eugène Lacroix
- Creator Lifespan: 1814/1873
- Date Created: 1835
- Type: Drawing
- Rights: Thaw Collection
- Medium: Brush and watercolor with scraping for highlights on white wove paper
- Provenance: Eugene V. Thaw Collection; Clarendon Gallery, Ltd., London
- Paper Support: White wove paper
- Inscribed: Lower left: a M. Constant D./ Eugène Lacroix/ Rome 1835
- Exhibitions: New York, NY - Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rooms With Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century. February 28 - May 29, 2011.New York, NY - Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. House Proud: Nineteenth-Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection, August 12, 2008 - January 25, 2009.New York, NY - Frick Museum. An Album of Nineteenth-Century Interiors: Watercolors from Two Private Collections, 1992.Oneonta, NY - Hartwick College. 18th and 19th Century Watercolors of European Domestic Interiors, 1987, no. 19 [Illus.].Cleveland, OH - Cleveland Museum of Art. Revolution to Second Republic, 1978, No. 24 [Illus.].
- Dimensions: Frame H x W x D: 39.7 x 50.2 x 2.5 cm (15 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 in.)Sheet: 22.8 x 32.9 cm (9 x 12 15/16 in.)
- Bibliography: Gail S. Davidson et al., House Proud, Nineteenth-century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection (New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2008), 87, pl. 15.Christopher Riopelle and Xavier Bray, A Brush with Nature: The Gere Collection of Landscape Oil Sketches (London: The National Gallery, 1999), 17 [Illus.].Charlotte Gere, An Album of Nineteenth-Century Interiors: Watercolors from Two Private Collections (New York: The Frick Collection, 1992), 44-45 [Illus.].
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