A study of Values (after LeBrun)

‘A Study of Values (after LeBrun)’ is based on a tapestry by Charles LeBrun. It shows Louis XIV visiting the Gobelin Factory where ‘objets d’art’ were produced to adorn the royal residencies. Charles LeBrun as the king’s first painter was responsible for hundreds of craftsmen and also for providing the models of all works. All those riches are being shown the king as ‘offerings’, to value and honor him as head of the state. In my version I replace the craftsmen with refugees, almost all of them carrying possessions or their children, but no Sun King awaits them to accept their ‘offerings’, instead the movement is blocked by a wall of anonymus border guards protecting the ‘European Values’(Human dignity, freedom of movement, democracy, equality, rule of law and human rights)

I decided to change the tapestry in the background, a version of ‘The Passage of the Granicus’ one of LeBrun’s paintings from ‘the History of Alexander’, for Jaques-Louis Davids’s ‘The Tennis Court Oath.’

Een waardenstudie ( naar LeBrun)/ A Study of Values ( after LeBrun), painting measurements 275 x 430 cm, acrylic and oilpaint on linnen,  31 works on paper in different sizes and 10 smaller paintings. 2018