Page 144 - Pierre Durand Collection Including Chinese Art and Porcelain Sothebys Jan 27 2022

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LOUIS-ANDRÉ-GABRIEL BOUCHET (PARIS 1759-1842)
Portrait of Eugene Isabey (1803-1886), full-length, with a sword
oil on canvas
55 x 38º in. (149.7 x 97.2 cm.)
$120,000-180,000
PROVENANCE:
Anonymous sale; Courtier, de Nicolay, and Oger-Dumont, Paris, 17 June 1994,
lot 71, where acquired by the present owner.
EXHIBITED:
Paris, Salon, 1810, no. 107.

Louis-André-Gabriel Bouchet was an aspiring history painter in the 1780s Lucie, whose portrait is signed by the artist, ‘Bouchet f[ecit]’, on the lower
and ‘90s and one of Jacques Louis David’s many pupils. In 1797, he was left, was the future Madame Collon. Bouchet presents her as a playful (and
awarded the prestigious Premier Grand Prix de Rome with his Death perhaps naughty) teenager, running through a garden while carrying off a
of Cato the Younger (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris). It launched him on a bird’s nest that she protects inside her upturned bonnet, its tiny inhabitants
successful career as a history painter who regularly exhibited at the Paris chirping eagerly. Bouchet’s vivid depiction of her lively, bright expression and
Salons until 1819. While his contributions to the Salons included Homer billowing white muslin dress endow the image with both a youthful energy
Reciting his Poetry (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers), Innocence Yielding to and graceful monumentality.
Seduction (Compiègne) and Mentor and Telemachus (Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Grenoble), his most accomplished works and prestigious commissions were As befitting a well-bred young boy of the Napoleonic era, seven-year-old
increasingly portraits. In 1807, Bouchet was commissioned to paint Napoleon Eugène Isabey displays a self-possessed dignity beyond his years. Stylishly
in Imperial Dress (Versailles) as a pendant to Robert Lefevre’s portrait of the dressed, in emulation of Mamluk warriors who came to Paris with Napoleon
Empress Josephine, and later Louis XVIII in Coronation Robes (Musée Granet, after the Egyptian Campaign of 1798, Eugène wears a gold-brocaded red
Aix-en-Provence). vest and red leather slippers and holds an elegantly tooled, red-enameled
sword in his right hand; his left hand rests nonchalantly on the arm of a
Bouchet met Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855) in the 1780s during their magnificent, Empire-style armchair supported by elaborately carved griffons
apprenticeship in David’s studio, where they were fellow pupils, and the two with lion’s heads. Bouchet’s handling of the various textures of fabrics, wood,
remained lifelong friends. Although trained as a history painter, scarcely and metalwork displays a masterly command of his medium.
any paintings by Isabey are known and he never exhibited any in the Salons,
instead building a successful career as a miniaturist, draftsman and Eugène Louis-Gabriel Isabey (1803-1886) would grow up to achieve a degree
lithographer. Tall, handsome, charming and socially connected, Isabey was of fame and artistic success that exceeded even that of his celebrated father.
part of an exclusive intellectual and social milieu and included among his After training with his father and copying the Old Masters in the Louvre, he
friends Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël and Madame Recamier. Married set up a studio with the landscapist Xavier Leprince at Honfleur. Striking out
in 1791, Isabey fathered four children; surviving letters from his fellow artists on his own the following year, he began exhibiting landscapes at the Salon in
Jean-Antoine Gros and François Gérard suggest that the activities of Isabey 1824. In 1830, Eugène travelled to Algiers at the invitation of the Royal Navy
and his young family were a source of lively interest among his tight-knit to paint scenes of its naval campaign. Soon thereafter he was appointed a
circle of friends. court painter to Louis-Philippe and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in
1832. Highly revered throughout Europe during a long career, Isabey painted
Bouchet exhibited individual, full-length portraits of all four of Isabey’s landscapes, genre scenes and historical subjects, but was best-known as a
children at the Paris Salon of 1810, which remained with Isabey’s master of seascapes, marine paintings and dramatic shipwrecks, in both oils
descendants until they were dispersed at auction in France in 1994. The and watercolor, and in his later years numbered Johan Barthold Jongkind and
portraits depict Isabey’s eldest daughter, Alexandrine (1791-1871), who as Eugène Boudin among his distinguished students.
a four-year-old was famously included in a magnificent full-length double
portrait of 1795 (today in the Louvre) by François Gérard, in which she is
depicted tenderly holding her father’s hand; his eldest son, Hector (1797-
1814); and the present portraits of his younger children Lucie (b. 1795) and
Eugène (1803-1886).

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