Figure 2.16 JeanBaptisteSiméon Chardin: The White Tablecloth, oil on canvas, 96.8 × 123.5 cm,
1731/32. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1944,
699.
Source: Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.Questions of Modernity
Although the hierarchy of genres remained extremely influential, it was also subject to creative disruption
and destabilization. Throughout the century there were multiple examples of conflation of different
generic types. Some new genres (e.g. the fête galante) emerged. Many genres were invigorated by new
trends in style and subject matter. Academies had little choice but to accommodate these developments,
while maintaining publicly and in theory an allegiance to traditional hierarchies. Writers and artists
demanded during the Revolution in France greater attention to more “democratic” styles (including
naturalism) and subjects (the “lower” genres). The drive to celebrate the Revolution’s heroes and rebel
against the outwardly rigid attitudes of the Académie royale in matters of genre, created a climate
favorable to the modernizing ideology expressed in works such as David’s The Dead Marat (La Mort de
Marat, 1793) and his drawing The Tennis Court Oath (Le Serment du Jeu de paume, 1791). Such works
injected the realism associated with the “lower” genres into the representation of momentous