The purchase at Sotheby's auctions of a XVIIIth painting puts Angers in unexpected perspective

Credit Picture : Sotheby's

The recent purchase by Angers city at Sotheby's auctions of a French classic painting could be considered as a strange idea by some local communities involved in the assistance towards the most humble inhabitants. The master work, "L'amour à l'espagnole", was painted in 1773 by Jean-Baptiste Leprince, a French artist who was a leading student of the great painter François Boucher. The painting doesn't depict the former Angers landscapes or inhabitants. 

It has been bought € 240 750 on November 12 by Angers city and several other public authorities. The only link with Angers of "L'auberge à l'espagnole" (representing a sleeping woman who a young man is attempting to wake with his guitar) is to have been part a collection of master works gathered by Pierre-Louis Eveillard de Livois, an Angers antiques collector of the XVIIIth century, whose belongings were seized by the Revolution française.

Wikipedia : Angers Museum of Fine Arts

While the city and its inhabitants face an economic crisis which led public authorities, private companies and of course households  to restrain their lifestyle, such a purchase could be considered a little bit luxurious. In difficult economic circumstances, choices - even symbolic - have to made up. That choice to buy a painting (not disclosed by the Angers city website), whatever be its interest, mays raise questions. 

Every day, signs of a growing poverty appear : more an more inhabitants are eligible to a social housing, caritative communities, like recently Les restaurants du coeur, notice an important increase of low income or even penniless families. Lamour à l'espagnole will be displayed next year at the Angers museum of fine arts, returning to the place it was more than 200 years ago. Its contemplation will envetually warm the mood of inhabitants but some of them will think that in difficult times, the first thing one do is not to buy a painting.