Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin

Beginnings

The unconventional career of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) grew out of unconventional beginnings. He was born into a family of artisans, including several in service to the crown. His elder brother, Charles Germain (1721–1786), designed embroidery for luxurious fabrics and a younger brother, Louis Michel (1731–1779), painted decoration on Sèvres porcelain. By age twenty-three, Saint-Aubin was employed as a professor in the Ecole des Arts, a school recently founded by the architect Jacques François Blondel (1705–1774). There, he taught courses in “principles and proportions of the human body; the elements of history required to select appropriate attributes and allegories for princely dwellings, sacred structures, country houses, public buildings, fêtes, and so on.”

Even as he worked with Blondel, Saint-Aubin aspired to the elevated status of history painter to the king and began training under the guidance of François Boucher (1703–1770). In the end, his efforts fell short, and he would go on to forge his own path, taking on commissions here and there but mostly drawing ceaselessly, propelled by his erudition, imagination, and curiosity.

Parks, Fairs, and Diversions

Saint-Aubin moved easily in all spheres of urban life, recording quiet moments and public celebrations. In the works shown here, we encounter parades and street performances, refined gatherings and drunken revelry. Other artists of Saint-Aubin’s time treated many of the same subjects, but without his close observation and sympathetic eye.

On rare occasions, Saint-Aubin produced oil paintings of public entertainments, for which he would make numerous preparatory figure studies. These charming chalk sketches—often many to a sheet—give every appearance of having been drawn outdoors from live models. He also made prints of festive events in specific settings, etching them on the same minute scale as his drawings, and with the same bravura.

The theater was another of Saint-Aubin’s favorite haunts, especially the comic productions of the Italian troupes known as the commedia dell’arte. He was entranced not only by the humor and drama of the performances on stage but also by the fashionable audiences, replete with their own humor and drama.

Family and Childhood

Many eighteenth-century artists and artisans received their first lessons in drawing from relatives and others in their social network. Saint-Aubin came from a family in this mold, for whom artistic instruction and play often went hand in hand. A lifelong bachelor, he was particularly close to his elder brother, Charles Germain, a designer of embroidery and etcher of humorous vignettes. His younger brother Augustin would become an accomplished portrait engraver of aristocrats and luminaries of all types. In a distinctly different vein, Augustin also produced sympathetic prints of ragged young boys who worked on the streets of Paris as letter carriers, organ players, and shoeshine boys.

Saint-Aubin’s affection for his family shines through in his double portrait of two of Charles Germain’s children, Germain Augustin and Rose, the latter holding a hurdy-gurdy, a musical instrument popular in the eighteenth century. Interest in childhood as a distinct stage of life to be cherished and respected flourished in Saint-Aubin’s time under the influence of the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

Commerce and Whimsy

Saint-Aubin never became wealthy as an artist. What income he did earn came from a ragtag assortment of sources. At various points he tried his hand at designing illustrations for books, business cards for shops, and decorative art objects from vases to watchcases. His forays into these arenas of artistic production rarely adhered to established prototypes. His business cards took the form of illusionistic shop interiors; his etchings of vases resembled living organisms.

Saint-Aubin’s teacher François Boucher was an important trailblazer in breaking down traditional boundaries between art and commerce. A leading painter in the Rococo style, Boucher was awarded major royal commissions at the same time his designs for ornament and illustration found wide dissemination throughout Europe. Unlike the older artist, Saint-Aubin was not a member of the Académie Royale and had little need for its hierarchies and defined specialties. What his career lacked in prestige, it gained in freedom.

Church and City

Religious subjects held little appeal for Saint-Aubin. He was, however, often to be found in and around the city’s churches, chronicling the events that took place there. He was also fascinated by architecture, especially the building projects that changed the face of his beloved city. The most important of these was the design and construction of the church of Saint Genevieve, a Neoclassical structure that in the early years of the French Revolution would be repurposed as a mausoleum for French luminaries, known today as the Pantheon.

The idea for the project dates to the early years of Louis XV’s reign, when he fell ill during the War of the Austrian Succession. The king vowed that if he recovered, he would rebuild the dilapidated church of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. The commission was given to Jacques Germain Soufflot (1713–1780) but only completed after the architect’s death.

War and Peace

Throughout the eighteenth century, European powers battled for territory both on the Continent and in distant colonies. France saw few gains and the public grew increasingly discontent. To restore a sense of glory to the nation, artists and architects were enlisted to frame the narrative and mold public opinion.

Following the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, in 1763, Edme Bouchardon’s (1698–1762) equestrian statue of Louis XV was installed in the newly created Place Louis XV (today the Place de la Concorde). Saint-Aubin made numerous drawings and prints portraying the accompanying fanfare. He also depicted military victories on distant shores, events he would only have known of secondhand. The islands of the West Indies in particular were fiercely contested by colonialist powers, for whom the labor of enslaved Africans generated considerable wealth.

Saint-Aubin’s most extraordinary military-themed drawing illustrates an episode from Roman history. In a dreamlike confluence, his depiction of the triumphal return of the Roman general Pompey pulses with the energy of the Parisian street life and theater he drew so often.

Glory and Allegory

Saint-Aubin was not only thoroughly fluent in the language of allegory—he had taught courses in it from age twenty-three—he had an exceptional gift for animating symbolic figures, breathing life into them to the point where they could seamlessly coexist with their flesh-and-blood counterparts.

Allegory was well-suited to extol events and qualities related to the monarchy and other powerful figures. From a more cynical viewpoint, heaping glory on those in a position to distribute commissions and benefits could be a successful career strategy.

The examples shown here include celebrations of royal births, weddings, and recovery from illness. Saint-Aubin also had a particular interest in the crown’s impact on the urban fabric of the city and the well-being of its inhabitants. Two of the works on display, for instance, express gratitude for the dowries given to six hundred less fortunate young women.

Buying and Collecting Art

The eighteenth century saw the birth of the art market as we know it today. Collections were dispersed at public auctions, where buyers perused the offerings and competed for the choicest examples. Saint-Aubin was a regular presence at these events, often filling his copy of the sale catalogue with hundreds of thumbnail sketches in chalk.

Auction catalogues of the time sometimes included etched frontispieces with scenes of connoisseurs examining works of art or cabinets of natural specimens. The presence of both men and women lends these images an air of refined sociability. For Saint-Aubin, the salesroom was a place not only to enjoy art but to build knowledge and record information. In his copies of sale catalogues, he would occasionally note errors he discovered.

In the sheet exhibited here, drawn at the 1777 sale of the estate of Louis François, prince de Conti (1717–1776), Saint-Aubin labeled each tiny sketch with the corresponding lot number, allowing us to identify specific works. The sketch at the upper left corner, for instance, depicts lot 743, a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) of a woman at a window blowing a kiss.

To Instruct and Amuse

The graphic arts played a critical role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge during the eighteenth century. What we refer to as the Enlightenment was a cultural, scientific, and aesthetic enterprise of many contributors and many audiences. 

Among the books on view here is a treatise on embroidery by Saint-Aubin’s elder brother, Charles Germain, and a compendium by Saint-Aubin’s first employer, Jacques François Blondel, offering guidance on the construction and decoration of buildings.

Other works contributed to the fields of history and the natural sciences. Antoine Joseph Dézallier d’Argenville’s catalogue of types of shells features detailed hand-colored plates and an allegorical frontispiece by Saint-Aubin’s teacher François Boucher. Saint-Aubin himself contributed plates for a book on ancient history, images no doubt more engaging to the viewer than the text.