La conversation interrompue

Three women in full skirts and a gentleman in a feathered cavalier’s hat have been caught mid-conversation in a sunlit park, the encounter more a meeting of silhouettes than a narrative, while the impasto strokes of the foliage dissolve the scene into a flicker of gold, green and rose. This is one of the small fêtes galantes Adolphe Monticelli painted in his late years in Marseille — miniature recitals of the Watteau world filtered through a palette of astonishing richness. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.