Rosenberg Lecture: Enlightened Inspiration: Inventing Genius in the First Age of Celebrity

Step back in time to 18th-century France at the annual Rosenberg Fête celebrating French painting and sculpture from the Michael L. Rosenberg Collection.

This year, Dr. Aaron Wile, Associate Curator of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, presents Enlightened Inspiration: Inventing Genius in the First Age of Celebrity. Focusing on François André Vincent’s Portrait of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Choudard (called Desforges), among other works in the Michael L. Rosenberg Collection, this talk explores how the question “What does genius look like?” took on new urgency in the 18th century. It was during this period that our modern understanding of genius, as an individual endowed with exceptional powers of creativity and insight, emerged. Not coincidentally, it was also during this period that modern celebrity culture took shape. For the first time, thinkers, writers, and scientists became public figures, as new forms of mass media and consumerism fueled fascination with their lives and an unquenchable demand for their images. Artists responded by creating new kinds of portraits that helped define the attitudes and attributes of genius. Remarkably intimate images made for public consumption and scrutiny, these portraits raised new questions about the nature of authenticity, autonomy, and selfhood.

Aaron Wile is Associate Curator of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. A specialist in 17th- and 18th-century French art, he earned his MA and PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and has held fellowships from the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities. His publications have appeared in several major journals and have received awards from the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Association of Art Museum Curators. He is currently working on an exhibition on the celebrity portrait in 18th-century London and Paris.