FRENCH SCHOOL, Eighteenth Century
Letter Rack with an Engraving, Drawings, Sheet Music, Playing Cards, a Calling Card, Books, Letters, Quills, a Pen Knife, Sealing Wax, and a Crucifix
oil on canvas
20 x 30 ½ inches (51 x 77.5 cm.)
Letter rack paintings were popular in the eighteenth century particularly in France, England, The Netherlands, Spain and Germany[1], and their intent was twofold. One was “to startle the eye with a virtuoso ability to create the illusion of graspable objects in paint”.[2] The other was a vanitas which displayed a collection of objects chosen and arranged to remind the viewer, through a familiar grammar of visual signs, of the transience of life and the vacuousness of worldly success.”[3]
In the center of the letter rack is a weathered engraving of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt attached to the board by four red seals. Emanating from it are playing cards, sheet music, a drawing of two men and a letter. Below the straps are letters, five quills, two books, a pen knife, a calling card, sealing wax, along with a drawing of an old woman, and a tilted crucifix. The board is pine with two dark round knots. Everything that is made of paper appears worn, bent, tattered and dirty. Their overall condition adds to the poignancy of the work’s message as well as an indication of the passage of time and loss of relevancy.
Letters on the rack are shown open, closed and folded. Envelopes as we think of them today were not invented until the nineteenth century, but instead paper was folded into intricate rectangles with the address on one side and closed on the reverse with a wax seal.[4] After the painting was sold, artists at times added the name of the purchaser onto a painted envelope, and that is perhaps the case in this work in the upper left. The quills, pen knife, and sealing wax are implements needed to write and seal letters. But ephemeral in nature, letters as well as the floral calling card are only of momentary importance.
The playing cards, books, and music sheet further embellish the painting’s message. The cards represent the fleeting pleasure derived from games of chance; the books and drawings “the futility of human endeavor in the sweep of time”;[5] and music as it ends fades away “like the smoke of a extinguished candle”.[6]
This work was painted in France during the Age of Enlightenment whose main spokesperson was Voltaire (1694 – 1778) an advocate for freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.[7] In keeping with these times the reason for painting the engraving and cross as tarnished and askew becomes clear, underlining the impermanence of even these beliefs.
[1] “Trompe L’Oeil, Letter Rack”, Art Uk/artuk.org.
[2] Dror Wahrman, Mr. Collier’s Letter Racks, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 235, fn. 1.
[3] Ibid, p. 23.
[4] Ibid, pp. 44-45.
[5] Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste, Food & Philosophy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2002, p.162.
[6] Raymond J. Kelly, III, To Be or Not to Be, Four Hundred Years of Vanitas Painting, Flint Institute of Arts, 2006, p.27.
[7] “Voltaire, Champion of Freedom” at Adam Smith Institute, adamsmith.org.