The grasshopper 1872

Jules Joseph Lefebvre painted ‘The grasshopper’ in France, but we don’t know exactly when. This is not an historical painting as such, but an allegorical nude. Images of alluring, unclad women were deemed acceptable to the Parisian Salon audience as long as they represented mythological figures, or personifications of abstract ideas such as truth, beauty or, in this case, perhaps leisure. This painting can be read as a commentary on the social structures of its time. The aesthetic conventions and institutions of art, such as the Salon, demanded that female nudity be depicted in a highly conventionalized and idealized manner. Here, the woman’s pose and expression seem to invite the viewer’s gaze, while also projecting a degree of vulnerability. By researching the history of the Parisian Salon, and the artistic conventions that governed it, we can arrive at a fuller understanding of the role of art in reflecting and shaping social attitudes towards gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century France.