Monsieur Jourdain's Dancing Lesson: Molière, <i>Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme</i>, Act II, Scene 1

William Powell Frith's Monsieur Jourdain's Dancing Lesson, depicting the celebrated comic scene from Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme in which the self-important bourgeois protagonist receives instruction in courtly dance from a supercilious master, was painted around 1840 to 1850 when literary genre painting was at the heart of British exhibition culture. The play, written in 1670 for Louis XIV's court, satirized the social pretensions of the newly rich merchant class, and its central character — desperate to acquire the habits and accomplishments of the nobility — remained a recognizable comic type in subsequent centuries. Frith was a master of storytelling genre who went on to create the great panoramic social comedies of Victorian Britain such as Derby Day and The Railway Station, and this early literary subject shows him developing his narrative skills within the established framework of theatrical genre.

The composition is organized around the comic dynamic between the fussy dancing master and the hapless Jourdain, their contrasting body language and expression carrying the scene's humor. Frith's handling is smooth and anecdotal, faces characterized with expressive precision. The period costume and props are rendered with historical care.