Exhibition ‘Portraits’ Musée Ernest Cognacq

Every year, the museum presents an “From the Storage” exhibition: a thematic display that showcases its collections and offers visitors the chance to discover works that are rarely exhibited. The selection on view today focuses on portraiture: painted, drawn, engraved, sculpted… the genre is well-represented in the collections. The original collection of paintings consists primarily of 18th-century portraits, which are unfortunately anonymous: neither their artists nor their subjects have been identified to date (with a few exceptions). The history of portraiture is closely linked to that of the representation of the individual. After serving political and social functions in the 16th century, a glorifying function in the 17th, and a more psychological function in the 18th, portraiture reached its peak in the 19th century. Now accessible to all, family portraits became a fixture in bourgeois homes, serving as symbols of success to be passed down to future generations. The genre gradually fell out of favor in the 20th century as artists turned their attention to experimentation and abstraction. The works on display reflect this evolution.