Mallet: Libertine Scenes

Jean-Baptiste Mallet - Gothic Bathroom - 1810 - Oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm - Château-Musée, Dieppe (click photo for larger image)Although French painter Jean-Baptiste Mallet (1759-1835) was wildly popular during his day, no in-depth biography is available. We DO know that he exhibited at every Salon between 1793 and 1827, a noteworthy testament to his success. He was awarded a second class medal in 1812 and a first class medal in 1817. Mallet executed very few portraits, preferring instead to paint nymphs bathing and graceful classical nudes. He established his reputation with genre scenes (often done in gouache) of fashionable and often libertine subjects, always elegant and refined. During the Napoleonic Era, it was permissible to cast a vaguely churchy air over blatantly erotic scenes, such as we see here in the “Gothic Bathroom.” Shown at the Salon of 1810, the female figure undresses before a washstand that strongly resembles a baptismal font—by the light of a stained-glass window set with scenes of love. “The blasphemous comedy of this picture is sufficient warning to take Napoleonic religion with a pinch of salt.”