A River and a Fountain Nymph

This painting of a river deity and a fountain nymph belongs to the tradition of allegorical personification of water — rivers and springs given human form — that had deep roots in classical sculpture and continued to inform European decorative painting through the eighteenth century. Charles Joseph Natoire's version, now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, carries a date of 1800 in the database which is certainly erroneous for an artist who died in 1777; the work should be attributed to his mature active period. The Stockholm Nationalmuseum assembled its French Rococo collection through both direct purchases and gifts, and works like this entered through the networks of European collecting that distributed French eighteenth-century painting across the continent. Such subjects — semi-nude figures associated with water, lounging in riverine landscapes — were standard ornamental subjects for aristocratic interiors and were produced by the major Rococo decorative painters in large numbers.

The composition places the river deity and nymph in a languid, recumbent arrangement that suits both the watery subject and the Rococo taste for relaxed sensory ease. Natoire's handling of the semi-nude figure against a landscape of reeds, water, and sky demonstrates his standard approach: warm skin tones, cool backgrounds, fluid brushwork in draperies and hair.