The Selection
In the first Paris Salon under the Revolution, in 1791, he exhibited three small versions of what he seems to have intended to be a group of four large paintings showing the manners of different ancient peoples, and also the four Ages of Man. Paris saw "The Selection of Children in Sparta", "Germanic Wedding" (these small versions both now in Munich), and "The Olympic Games". All these were produced at their considerable full size. The "Games" (by 1791, 209.5 × 386 cm) and the "Selection" (by 1786, 138 cm × 260 cm) are both now in Geneva, and the "Wedding" (by 1788, 136.5 × 259 cm) is now in the Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur. "The Selection of Children in Sparta" ("Le Choix des enfants de Sparte"), based on a story in Plutarch, shows a combination of the severe moralizing impulses of Neoclassicism and the contemporary cult of "sentiment" in the figure at left of the exiting father whose infant has failed the selection; the baby is retained for later exposure.