Non-Finito? (or something like it): Sketching the French Revolution

The notion of the non-preparatory oil sketch is firmly associated with the nineteenth century, yet its relationship to the legacies of the non-finito are rarely discussed. This paper considers late eighteenth-century discourses around the sketch, positing them as the catalyst for stylistic experimentation during the French Revolution. The eighteenth century saw a renewed interest in Roger de Piles’ rhetoric on the importance of the sketch for engaging a viewer’s imagination, claiming the status of pseudo-participatory art for the sketch. Focusing on Hubert Robert’s loose handling and stylistic sketchiness, I explore how these aesthetics took on new narrative meaning with the onset of the Revolution. His easel painting representing the first pivotal event of the Revolution, La Bastille dans les premiers jours de sa démolition (1789), skirts representation of the event, focusing instead on the physical monument; stylistically, he adapts his customary non-fini, often used in decorative paintings, to unexpectedly new significance. I argue that the unprecedented socio-political turmoil of the Revolution granted new narrative potential to (finished) works of art with a sketch-like aesthetic, and served as the foundation for artistic experimentation with new stylistic idioms that responded to the new conditions of art-making during the Revolution. By exploring the late eighteenth-century forerunners to the nineteenth- century independent oil sketch, this paper reframes our notion of finish and handling, of the categories of decorative versus easel painting, and of the relationship between stylistic responses and historical contingency.