21/10/2026
' works After Gainsborough Lady in a Landscape, 2025, After Fragonard The Joys of Motherhood, 2025, After Boucher The Abduction of Europa, 2025, currently on display in exhibition Panorama Europa.
After Gainsborough Lady in a Landscape is a direct reference to the 18th century British painter Thomas Gainsborough, in whose portraits the sitter often becomes blended into the natural landscape surrounding them. This melding of subject and environment was seen as interpretation of the sitter’s identity, aligning refinement with the beauty of nature and signifying the intertwining importance of land ownership and status.
After Fragonard The Joys of Motherhood is based on The Joys of Motherhood by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, an 18th century Rococo painting that presents an idealised image of maternal affection. Fragonard’s work sought to explore themes of love, intimacy, and leisure and his figures often belong to an imagined aristocratic world in which labour, class inequality, and social tension are absent.
After Boucher, The Abduction of Europa draws on The Abduction of Europa by François Boucher, a Rococo painting which depicts the mythological story of Europa being abducted by Zeus, who has transformed himself into a bull. In Boucher’s version, the scene is theatrical and sensual, Europa surrounded in soft drapery and a beautiful landscape depicting the act of abduction and sexual violence through a divine and deceptive lens.
Figgis’ reinterpretation of these works unpacks how inherited cultural narratives surrounding gender, power and myth are reconsidered today. By loosening the figures and allowing them to blur into their surroundings, Figgis disrupts the aesthetic pleasure that characterises these paintings and suggests that these canonical scenes are not neutral, but rather embedded with histories of domination and representation that can be questioned and reimagined.
Come see Figgis' works and more in our current exhibition Panorama Europa which on until November 1st. The gallery is open 11am to 5pm, Tuesday to Sunday.
© Genieve Figgis - Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech
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