43 JEAN­FRANCOIS DE TROY French, 1679­1752 Before the Ball, 1735 Oil on canvas 9 81.8 x 65 cm (32 x 25/16 in.) At bottom right, signed De Troy 1735 84.PA.668 De Troy was one of eighteenth­century France's most versatile artists. The son of a well­known portrait painter, he came to excel not only in that field but also in the painting of historical, mythological, and religious subjects. He worked successfully in both large and small scale, and his works, like those of Watteau (1684—1721), vividly convey the elegance and sophistication characteristic of fashionable Parisian society of the time. The Museum's painting, along with its companion piece, The Return from the Ball (now lost, but known from an engraving), was painted in 1735 for Germain­ Louis de Chauvelin, the minister of foreign affairs and keeper of the seal under Louis XV. When De Troy exhibited them in the Salon of 1737, the pair was declared to be the artist's finest work. Before the Ball typifies De Troy's tableaux de mode, depictions of the aristocratic class at home and at leisure. These paintings are now considered to be among the most significant of the artist's works. In the Museum's painting a group of men and women watch a maid put the final touches on her mistress's hair. The onlookers are already wrapped in cloaks and hold masks in eager anticipation of the evening's festivities. At the time, some critics disapproved of the lifestyle celebrated by such paintings, but De Troy apparently moved easily in fashionable circles and does not appear to have been moralizing about the vanity of the aristocratic behavior. On the contrary, he seems to have relished it and to have well understood its nuances and conventions. He has succeeded in capturing the slightly charged and even erotic climate of the proceedings, and there is a certain realism in his observation that betokens a clear and acutely perceptive eye. BF 80 FRENCH SCHOOL