Provenance
Commissioned by François Jules Duvaucel [1672-1739] for a salon in the Château de La Norville, France; remained in the château through successive owners until sometime between 1901 and 1906; (Fauché, Paris), by 1907;[1] purchased 1922 through (André Carlhian, Paris) by Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice [1875-1956] and his wife, Eleanor Elkins Widener Rice [1861-1937], for the dining room of their Fifth Avenue manion, New York;[2] by inheritance 1956 to Mrs. Rice's children, George D. Widener, Jr. [1889-1971] and Eleanor Widener Dixon [1891-1966, Mrs. Fitz Eugene Dixon]; gift 1957 to NGA.
[1] The history of the decoration of the Château de La Norville is thoroughly described by Bruno Pons, _Grands décors français, 1650-1800: reconstitués en Angleterre, aux Etats-Unis, en Amérique du Sud et en France_, Dijon, 1995: 221-426. See also Abbé A.E. Genty, _Histoire de la Norville et de sa seigneurie_, Brussels and Geneva, 1885: 112-129.
[2] Mrs. Rice was born Eleonor Elkins in Philadelphia. Her first husband was George Dunton Widener, who perished with their elder son, Harry, in the sinking of the _Titanic_ in 1912. She married Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice in 1915. Her two other children with Widener inherited the New York residence after Dr. Rice's death.
Records of the Carlhian firm are in the Special Collections of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, accession no. 930092. Copies of documents referring to the wall paneling are in the NGA curatorial files; see in particular the letter of 6 July 1923, from André Carlhian to Mrs. Rice, in which he tells her that "the Pineau boiserie which you bought from Fauché comes from the Chateau de la Norville, near Arpajon - about 20 miles from Paris." Both the six Huet paintings (NGA 1957.7.1-6) and the paneling (_boiserie_) by Pineau were given to the National Gallery of Art; the latter is NGA 1957.7.7.
Accession Number
1957.7.1
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 89.1 x 150.9 cm (35 1/16 x 59 7/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of George D. Widener and Eleanor Widener Dixon
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Oil Painting Canvas French
Background & Context
Background Story
Christophe Huet (1700-1759) was the master of the singerie — a decorative genre depicting monkeys engaged in human activities — and this series of four paintings (The Concert, The Dance, The Fishermen, The Picnic) represents his most accomplished work in the genre. In The Concert, monkeys dressed in fashionable 18th-century clothing perform music with the seriousness and self-importance of court musicians, satirizing the pretensions of aristocratic cultural life. Huet's monkeys are not merely comic; they are razor-sharp social commentary, their animal features contrasting with their cultivated poses to expose the artificiality of the social rituals they mimic.
Cultural Impact
The singerie was one of the most popular decorative genres of the French Rococo period, and Huet was its greatest practitioner. His monkeys decorated the walls of chateaux and hôtels particuliers, providing aristocratic patrons with a self-mocking reflection of their own cultural pretensions. The genre's popularity reflected the Enlightenment's growing skepticism about social hierarchy — if monkeys can make music, hold concerts, and follow social rituals, how natural are these behaviors in humans?
Why It Matters
The Concert is Huet's satire at its most refined: monkeys making music with the self-importance of Versailles courtiers. The joke works because the monkeys are so good at pretending — they hold their instruments correctly and maintain their postures perfectly — which makes the satire all the more pointed.
