Judgment of Paris

Charles Georges Dufresne (1876-1938) was a French painter, engraver, and designer known for his mythological subjects rendered in a decorative, sculptural style that combines classical tradition with modernist simplification. The Judgment of Paris from 1925 depicts the mythological episode in which Paris awards the golden apple to Aphrodite—the event that leads to the Trojan War. Dufresne's treatment combines the classical subject with the decorative color and sculptural form that distinguish his mature style, transforming the mythological narrative into a formal composition of interlocking forms and rich color.

Dufresne's Judgment of Paris is important in the history of French painting between the wars because it demonstrates the decorative, sculptural approach to classical subject matter that characterized the return to order in French art after World War I. The 1925 painting combines classical subject with modernist simplification in a way that defines the best art of the période de retour—the return to classical order that shaped French painting in the 1920s.

The Judgment of Paris is Dufresne's classical subject in modernist form: the mythological episode transformed into a formal composition of interlocking forms and decorative color that defines the French return to order after World War I. The 1925 painting demonstrates that classical tradition and modernist simplification could be combined rather than opposed.