This research paper focuses on the works of art that represent tendencies peculiar to Europe and the Persian Empire between the second half of the seventeenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. The first artwork, The Collation from a Set of the Italian Village Scenes, is a tapestry design produced by Francois Boucher between 1734 and 1736 (330x259cm, wool and silk). It is currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The second work, Garden Gathering, which is a collection of thirty-six cuerda seca tiles (104x188cm, tile, stone paste, glazes) created by an unknown artist between 1640 and 1650, is currently held at the same museum. Despite differences in terms of art media types, composition, and colour schemes, both works depict garden areas as the places of gatherings and social interaction. The opportunity to compare the theme of gardens in dissimilar art traditions of European and Middle Eastern countries was the key reason to select the works.
Brief History of the Selected Artworks
The tapestry design for the first artwork was developed by Francois Boucher. A well-known representative of the Rococo style in France, Boucher earned recognition and practised in different forms of art, including painting, etching, tapestry, and even costume design (Priebe, 2016). In The Collation, Boucher (1734-1736) places some prominent elements of the Rococo style, such as soft colours, in the context of then-popular garden and park tapestries. The tapestry design was part of the FĂŞtes Italiennes series created by Boucher (1734-1736) for the Beauvais tapestry factory in France. Regarding connections with the previous artists, Boucher (1734-1736) found inspiration in paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau to produce the entire series. The tapestry was finally woven only twenty-eight years after Boucher finished working on the design.
Much less is known about Garden Gathering in terms of its history. The artist or a group of artists who produced it remain unknown, but modern experts attribute the tile artwork to Iran or, more specifically, Isfahan Province (Garden gathering, 1640-1650). Taking the approximate period of creation into account, the artwork was created during the reign of the Safavid Dynasty. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the artwork originally appeared in the palace pavilion built by Abbas I of Persia near the Chahar Bagh Boulevard in Isfahan (Garden gathering, 1640-1650). Unfortunately, no information about the artist is available even today. My assumption is that the lack of records about specific individuals can be related to the region’s cultural and religious characteristics, such as the value of modesty and suppressing one’s arrogance.
Visual Analysis of the Selected Artworks
The Collation depicts two young women and two young men taking rest in the garden on a sunny day, and another young man serves cool drinks to them. Despite being relatively soft, the colour scheme is rather diverse and includes multiple shades of beige, green, and blue, which helps to create depth and volume. The composition is symmetrically balanced since the sitting characters are equidistant from the lower corners of the image. Repetition of patterns and lines is widely used to make different textures, such as fabric, leaves, wood, and sky easily distinguishable. The position of the young men’s legs and heads suggests movement and some agitation resulting from the appearance of the third man. Every character is focused on something or someone in the central part of the image, which creates a certain rhythm. Thanks to the good selection of shades, the combination of soft, strong, and bright lines attracts more attention to the central part due to the splashes of colour, whereas the background is softer and darker. Overall, properly elaborated details, colour transitions, and the effective use of contrast make the tapestry a well-coordinated work.
Garden Gathering uses a limited colour palette, with white, black, blue, yellow, and green as prevailing colours. The absence of smooth transitions between colours results in high contrast and the lack of depth and realism. The extensive use of repetitive elements, including flowers, leaves, and fabric patterns, contributes to the unity of style, increases contrast, and prevents the image from being too empty and inexpressive. Next, regarding rhythm, despite the absence of means to use light and shadows, the artwork depicts some movement towards the centre of attention – the woman with the uncovered head that looks straight at the viewer. Regarding the artwork’s composition, although the key character is in the central part of the picture, the presence of two standing women closer to the right edge reduces symmetry, thus making he artwork balanced asymmetrically. To some extent, the composition looks incomplete because there is one more character, but only a small part of her body is visible. Different structural elements, such as straight lines, wavy lines, and dots, help to make even the smallest objects well-defined and separated from the surrounding elements.
Comparative Analysis of the Artworks: Similarities and Differences
The selected artworks do not have much in common, and any similarities between them mostly relate to the themes, not the forms of artistic expression. The main common feature is that both artworks represent gardens as a good place for recreational activities for apparently wealthy people. Moreover, the artworks depict interactions between men and self-confident women that seem to feel worthy. The only similarity dealing with the form is the extensive use of repetitive elements to depict trees in a detailed way.
The artworks are greatly different when it comes to the selected style, simplicity versus complexity, and colour choices. When it comes to style, The Collation is a proper example of idealism, elaboration, and delicacy peculiar to Rococo. In contrast, Garden Gathering demonstrates the features of Safavid tile art, including green, blue, and yellow pigments, floral motifs, and the simplicity of shapes (Mason, 2018). Interestingly, according to Ghada Amer, Garden Gathering resembles more contemporary naĂŻve art and the Matissean simplicity of form (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.). In terms of both colour palettes and the types of lines, The Collation looks immeasurably more detailed and realistic. It is the case even though Boucher tries to depict an idealised setting in which the seemingly unimportant objects look visually pleasing and even flawless.
The Context and Artistic Choices
In The Collation, Boucher’s artistic choices are in line with the common features of Rococo in the eighteenth century. To start with, the advent of the style contributed to the popularity of the theme of gardens among artists in France and the Netherlands (Boucher, 1734-1736). The mentioned series of designs by Boucher (1734-1736) was informed by the public’s aesthetic preferences during that period. Among the basic features of Rococo painting were the promotion of aesthetic pleasure, certain glorification of the upper class, the theme of communication and youth, pastel colours, and the prevalence of serpentine lines (Nicholson, 2019). The majority of these typical features find reflection in the discussed artwork and other tapestry designs from the series. Boucher’s work depicts a cushy life of young and wealthy Europeans as something attractive and positive but completely ignores the “ugly” side of life coexisting with this happiness, such as extreme poverty and exhausting work.
In Garden Gathering, the key artistic choices are interconnected with the basic characteristics of the cuerda seca technology and the cultural influences of other nations on artists in Safavid Persia. Productive trade relationships with China during the fifteenth century contributed to the popularisation of floral motifs in Persian art, but polychrome yellow, blue, and green tiles were closer to authentic Persian art (“Safavid ceramics and tiles,” n.d.). The artwork being analysed features both the popular colour choices and simplified but persistent floral elements, which makes it represent some leading tendencies in Persian art of the time. Moreover, precise black contours and clearly separated coloured areas were the essential features of cuerda seca tiles in Safavid Persia, which explains the work’s relative simplicity (Mason, 2018). Finally, considering that the man’s cloak and hat look European-like in style, I would suggest that the work may depict an act of cultural exchange or trade.
Conclusion
To sum up, Garden Gathering is artistically appealing since it demonstrates the unique combination of being simple and detailed simultaneously. I would relate its significance and importance to its ability to shed light on the state of the ceramic industry in Safavid Iran. Next, The Collation appeals to me because of the complexity of its pastel but still expressive colour palette and the degree to which even the tiniest objects are detailed. Regarding significance, apart from its artistic merit, the second work gives the idea of prevailing values and aesthetic preferences during the Rococo period. The decision to select those particular works enabled me to explore totally different approaches to depicting wealthy people’s leisure time in gardens.
References
Boucher, F. (1734-1736). The collation from a set of the Italian village scenes [tapestry]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, United States. Web.
Garden gathering [tile art]. (1640-1650). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, United States. Web.
Mason, R. (2018). Safavid tile project I: The technology. The Royal Ontario Museum. Web.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). The Artist Project: Ghada Amer on an Iranian tile panel, Garden Gathering. Web.
Nicholson, P. J. (2019). Hendrick Goovaerts (1669–1720). Festivities with an actor as a charlatan, c 1710. Occupational Medicine, 69(7), 468-470.
Priebe, J. (2016). The artist as collector: François Boucher (1703–1770). Journal of the History of Collections, 28(1), 27-42.
Safavid ceramics and tiles. (n.d.). The Louvre Museum. Web.