A Summer Court

A Summer Court from 1867 belongs to the height of Monticelli's mature output, when he was producing his most characteristic fête galante scenes on cardboard supports that allowed particularly expressive paint application. The subject of an elegant outdoor gathering — figures in period costume in a garden or courtyard — gave Monticelli the opportunity to orchestrate colour rather than describe events. By the late 1860s he was working almost exclusively in Marseille, having retreated from Paris, and his increasingly unconventional technique began to alienate potential buyers while fascinating younger artists. The cardboard support used here would have been both economical and practical, absorbing initial layers differently than canvas and contributing to the distinctive matte and glossy contrasts in his surfaces. The work's presence in the Amgueddfa Cymru collection reflects the wave of Monticelli acquisitions by British and Welsh institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, driven partly by dealers championing his posthumous reputation.

Applied to cardboard, the paint shows characteristic absorption of lower layers contrasting with thick impasto highlights. Figures are built from stacked dabs of colour — creams, carmines, and deep blues — that read as costume at a distance but dissolve into abstract marks up close.