Family Group (Woman Reading to Two Children)
c. 1820
Medium
Lithograph in black, with hand-coloring and strengthening, on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 20 × 27.9 cm (7 7/8 × 11 in.); Sheet: 20.2 × 28.2 cm (8 × 11 1/8 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
39906
Art Historical Context
In the cozy confines of the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings, Dominique-Vivant Denon's *Family Group (Woman Reading Two Children)* (c 1820) captures a tender moment of intimacy. The French artist, diplomat, and pioneering museum director—best known for chronicling Napoleon's Egyptian campaign—depicts a engrossed in reading to two attentive children, evoking the era's growing emphasis on family life and education post-Revolutionary France. This lithograph, printed in black ink on wove paper with delicate-coloring and structural strengthening, exemplifies early 19th-century printm...
About the Artist
Dominique-Vivant Denon · 1747–1825
Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747–1825) was a French artist, diplomat, archaeologist, and museum administrator who became the first director of the Musée du Louvre — a role that earned him the title of "the father of all museums." Born Baron Vivant de Non in Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy, he was educated for a career in diplomacy and served under Louis XV and Louis XVI as a gentleman of the court and as a...