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Charles Joseph Natoire (French, 1700-1777), The Toilet of Psyche, 1735-1736. Oil on canvas. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase through the bequest of Judge Charles F. Claiborne.
After training in Rome, Natoire returned to Paris, and earned fame as a painter of grand historical and mythological paintings. The Toilet of Psyche belongs to a series of large-scale paintings commissioned for an aristocratic residence. Elaborating a fanciful episode in Apulius’ Golden Ass (a Roman “novel” written in the second century AD), Natoire portrays Psyche’s preparations for her marriage with Cupid, god of love, setting the scene anachronistically in an opulent Rococo boudoir, glittering with silks and gilded surfaces. Like The Surprise by his archrival Boucher, Natoire’s painting has all the hallmarks of Rococo style favored by the court's soft palette dominated by pink, rose, and pale blue, and a graceful composition enlivened by gentle curves and swelling forms. Natoire’s figures tend to be more attenuated than Boucher’s and are typically set in architectural surroundings, highlighting the illusionism he mastered in Rome. Brought to America by Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, this painting has been in New Orleans since 1845.
