Study for a Ceiling
Medium
Gouache
Dimensions
15 1/4 x 26 3/4 in. (38.7 x 68 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
Accession Number
32.85.9
Tags
Art Historical Context
"Study for a Ceiling," attributed to Jean-Jacques Lagrenée and François Joseph Bélanger, is a captivating gouache drawing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints collection. Created in an undated work (n.d.), this preparatory sketch measures 15¼ x 26¾ inches and exemplifies the collaborative spirit of 18th-century French decorative arts. Lagrenée, a prominent Rococo painter known for his elegant history scenes, and Bélanger, a skilled architect and designer, likely teamed up to envision grand interior schemes for palaces or public buildings. As a study for a ceiling, this go...
About the Artist
Jean Jacques Lagrenée|François Joseph Belanger · 1739–1821
Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, known as Lagrenée the Younger (1739–1821), was a distinguished French history painter, draftsman, and engraver born into a family of artists in Paris. The younger brother of the prominent Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée (Lagrenée the Elder), he studied under his elder sibling at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, honing his skills in the rigorous academic t...