L'Accordée de village

1761

Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 46 in. Musée du Louvre, Paris

The moment a father hands over his daughter's dowry, staged as a lesson in family feeling: the moral tableau as a Salon picture.

Look at

The figures run in a frieze across a shallow room, nearly all at the same distance from us.
Open hands at the centre — the father's and the groom's — are where the lines of the composition meet.
Light from the left lands on the bride's white dress; the rest is a muted range of browns, greys and dull red.

Shown at the Salon of 1761; planned as one of four pictures on the ages of life, of which only two were painted.
Owned by Randon de Boisset and the marquis de Marigny; Louis XVI bought it at Marigny's sale in 1782.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain