Jean Honoré Fragonard, 1732–1806, Blind Man’s Buff, c. 1750–1752, oil on canvas, Lent by the Toledo Museum of Art; Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

When Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon I, fled to America in 1815, he packed his collection of 18th-century French painting. In an effort to spread his native country's culture across the United States, he put his works on public display, causing a sensation and inspiring a new American fascination with French art.

From then on, such works made their way into museums and private collections from coast to coast.  America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting, on view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, through August 20, 2017, is the first survey of American taste for French painting of the period.

Rococo and neoclassical masterpieces from all corners of the United States— from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis and Birmingham to Phoenix — are brought together for the first time. On view with works originally held by Joseph Bonaparte and the Marquise de Pompadour, are decorative canvases by François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard, portraits by Jacques Louis David and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, landscapes by Hubert Robert, and still lifes by Jean Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Oudry. The selection emphasizes works by less familiar names, women artists, and one of the earliest mixed-race artists in the Western canon. It also explores various themes popular with late 19th- and early 20th-century American collectors—from fêtes galantes to the art of the Enlightenment—and how those genres continue to be acquired today.

"We are delighted to welcome these masterpieces from across the country to the nation's capital," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. "As the sole venue, the Gallery has the privilege of offering our visitors a chance to see some of the finest examples of 18th-century French painting found in America. The exhibition and catalog are a significant contribution to scholarship not just of American museums and collectors but of 18th-century French art as a whole."

America Collects is divided into eight sections, each focusing on a different category of American taste. First is the vision of France that appealed most to Americans in the 19th century: the romantic rococo. As a mistress to Louis XV, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the marquise de Pompadour, commissioned lush paintings by Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Greuze among others. On view are works from her collection, including Boucher's luxurious portrait of Pompadour as well as his The Toilette of Venus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Bath of Venus from the National Gallery of Art, originally painted in 1751 as pendants for her bathroom at the Château de Bellevue and reunited for the first time since the 18th century.

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