Artwork
The Souchay Family
The Souchay Family is an oil painting by the Rococo painting artist Anton Tischbein. It dates from 1790 and is held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.
About this work
Overview
Anton Wilhelm Tischbein, a member of the prolific Tischbein artistic lineage, completed the oil-on-canvas work *The Souchay Family* in 1790. The painting presents a domestic scene of a nine‑person household, rendered in the light, decorative manner typical of late Rococo portraiture. It is part of the permanent collection of Denmark’s Statens Museum for Kunst.
Subject & Meaning
The composition gathers four adults, four children and an infant within an elegantly appointed interior. The figures are arranged around a sofa, with one child clutching a cat, while others stand or lean in relaxed poses. The setting emphasizes familial intimacy and the social rituals of the period, highlighting the importance of lineage and domestic harmony.
Technique & Style
Executed in oil, Tischbein employs a restrained palette of blues, greens, and earth tones, allowing subtle tonal shifts to model flesh and fabric.
Executed in oil, Tischbein employs a restrained palette of blues, greens, and earth tones, allowing subtle tonal shifts to model flesh and fabric. Light falls across faces and garments, producing a gentle chiaroscuro that delineates form while preserving the soft, pastel quality associated with Rococo decor. Details such as powdered wigs and fine textiles are rendered with a delicate, almost tactile precision.
History & Provenance
Created in the late eighteenth century, the portrait entered the holdings of the Statens Museum for Kunst, where it remains on view. Its acquisition reflects the museum’s focus on European portraiture and the preservation of works by artists connected to the broader Tischbein family network.
Context
The painting belongs to a period when French-influenced Rococo aesthetics had spread across German-speaking regions, favoring elegance and decorative refinement in private commissions. Portraits of extended families served both as records of lineage and as visual affirmations of social status within the cultivated bourgeois milieu of the era.
Artist & collection
Artist
Anton Wilhelm Tischbein, known as the Hanauer Tischbein (1 March 1730, Haina - 1 November 1804, Hanau) was a German painter from the Tischbein family of artists.
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