Sketches of Dancers and Heads of Putti 1748

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin made this sketch of dancers and heads of putti sometime in the 18th century. At that time, the French aristocracy, hungry for spectacle, fuelled a vogue for opera and ballet. We see one manifestation of this in the figures on the left of the drawing who look as if they are curtseying. But the drawing is also an exercise in the kind of formal training that underpinned the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Founded in 1648, the Academy was one of the main institutions through which artists received training and patronage. This sketch embodies the kind of academic discipline encouraged in French art schools at the time. The putti, those chubby cherubic figures, were a common motif in academic art. This drawing reveals a lot about French society in the 1700s, and more detailed research into archival material about the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture would reveal even more.