Study of Amacie and Irene De La Grange 

Curator: Before us, we have Jean-André Rixens' oil-on-canvas painting "Study of Amacie and Irene De La Grange." It's rendered with an Impressionistic plein-air sensibility. Editor: Ah, yes! At first glance, there's such gentleness to it, like a faded photograph. I imagine the warmth of the sun on their faces as they were painted. There's a fleeting, dreamy atmosphere... Curator: Rixens likely crafted this piece outside, emphasizing the transience of light and atmosphere and his direct experience with nature, diverging from purely academic styles. One can also detect a close study of fabrics and clothing in the facture, noting the contrast of textures... Editor: Absolutely. I'm drawn to how he handles the fabrics—the play of light on their dresses is divine, though it doesn't hide from the fact these girls were most likely laced into stuffy garments on a warm day, likely suffering for this portrait to come into being... Do you also detect a sort of gentle melancholy about the subjects, despite their fine dress? It speaks to something more personal, more fragile... Curator: That's an insightful reading. Viewing it materially, it suggests how bourgeois sensibilities valued both displays of leisure, and the ability to mobilize labor to produce it. Portraits of this sort were important displays of status and aspiration. Note the facture; Rixens employs loose brushstrokes and a subdued palette, a radical change that emerged with the emergence of tube paints sold ready to be applied to the canvas with brushes created on a larger scale via machine... Editor: I keep being drawn back to the dog. Do you notice how Rixens renders it with such a languid posture? I mean, he manages to convey such profound boredom... that lazy sprawl disrupts any formality that was supposed to prevail! There is something there that feels very intimate about how it changes the atmosphere. Curator: I concur. His masterful application underscores the complexity and socio-cultural tensions inherent in portraying these individuals in an attempt to convey bourgeois affect. The texture serves both representational and expressive purposes. Editor: This portrait gives the illusion of being a light and breezy encounter. Yet I can't help but to see beyond that in the posture, the arrangement and the colors. It gives a fleeting sensation, as if it wasn't really there at all, to begin with.