In Grasse, Mallet paints the sweetness of surviving

Special correspondent in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes)

This is advice to give to a director who would like to stage Mozart’s operas: rush to Grasse, to the Jean-Honoré Fragonard Museum, to admire the canvases and gouaches of Jean-Baptiste Mallet (1759-1835), which make you think of Cosi Fan Tutteto Marriage of Figaro or at Don Giovanni. With great shrewdness and intelligence, this artist, a compatriot of Fragonard and friend of Prud’hon, hides strange details in his seemingly charming and light scenes: statues taken from his imagination quiver under the foliage, as if animated in unison the love affairs that take place in the evening in the parks, a young woman harassed by an enterprising boy grabs a bell on a table to call for help, the ribbons tremble, the hairstyles capsize…

Mallet excelled in genre scenes, pleasant anecdotes brilliantly executed, hence his reputation as a sometimes insipid painter. It is actually audacious: the