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| MARGUERITE GÉRARD (Grasse 1761 - Paris 1837)
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| ‘Le petit messager’
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Signed lower right: Mle Gérard.
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.5 cm.)
The Colnaghi painting is a fine example of an intimate interior genre scene by Marguerite Gérard that would have appealed greatly to the public and the critics of the period. Although Gérard studied, and may even have collaborated, with her brother-in-law Jean-Honoré Fragonard, she appears to have eschewed the sensuality and eroticism that characterize many of his later works in favour of a more domesticated and idealised portrayal of bourgeois and upper-class life. It is perhaps understandable, given her role as a female artist, that she focused largely on depictions of women, usually presented in romantic or maternal roles and often, as in our picture, accompanied by pets. While her canvases record the privileged and secluded lives of educated women of her own time, they also look forward to the domestic genre scenes that became popular later in the nineteenth-century. In Gérard’s oeuvre there is none of the drama and passion found in comparable works by Greuze or Fragonard. The closest parallel is perhaps the calmness and serenity found in the genre paintings of Chardin, although the beautiful young lady in our work is some distance from the more mundane and earthy women of the latter. She is a figure enclosed in a safe and sealed world. It is an environment, elegant and refined, that Gérard constructs from familiar motifs drawn from earlier sources and yet rearranges quite uniquely to create a world that is all her own.
‘Le petit messager’ was part of the celebrated collection of Cardinal Fesch sold in Rome between 1843 and 1845. He was perhaps Marguerite Gerard’s greatest admirer, owning around eleven paintings by her, including the pendant of ours, A young girl arranging flowers, whose present location is unknown. There are similarities between the two paintings seen in the ladies’ hairstyles, the pensive pose of their heads and the size of the canvases, however it is likely that there were ten to fifteen years separating these paintings, with the Colnaghi painting being completed later.
In our painting Gerard uses some of her favourite motifs, such as a young boy peering into the room from behind a screen which dates to the 1780s, the young woman with a knee on the stool is reminiscent of an illustration in Les Liaisons Dangereuses of 1796 and the emotive motif of the reflective globe appears in ‘Le Chat Angora’, currently with Colnaghi. Globes such as this one were objects of great rarity and value, and its inclusion in another work by Gérard suggests it was a studio prop belonging to the artist. It is not clear what the source for this motif is, although it recalls the interest in reflective surfaces found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish genre scenes and still-lifes (which probably derives ultimately from the convex mirror in Van Eyck’s famous Arnolfini Marriage). A mirrored sphere is itself very rare in such works, glass globes suspended by ribbons often feature in the still lifes of Pieter Gerritsz. van Roestraten (1630-1700), where they are associated with a vanitas theme, but it seems improbable that its presence here has any such function; rather it introduces an element of playfulness and animation to the scene. Elsewhere in our picture, the pedestal secretaire, the beautiful boulle marquetry cabinet and the tasseled stool are some of the studio props used by the artist after the 1800s. Also, the silk material covering the table, decorated with birds and other animals, is an element that can be seen in other works by the artist, but only in those works made in 1810 or later. The enclosed space in our picture, created by the screen blocking further access to the background and the crowding of figures and activity in the foreground, and the narrowing of space fashioned by the angles of the furniture were frequently used in works by Marguerite Gerard, and has the function of creating a feeling of intimacy.
The influence of such Dutch seventeenth-century masters as Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu and Caspar Netscher, is evident here, not only with the influence of the globe but, in the informal scale of the painting, the interior setting of the scene and its romantic undertones. Other elements also recall these ‘petits mâitres hollandaises’: the presence of pets, the elegant rug draped over the table and the meticulous attention to texture and detail. Gérard would have been able to see and study works by these Dutch artists in the Louvre (where she lived for about 30 years with Fragonard and her sister), and it is also possible that private collectors who owned paintings by Fragonard may have granted her access to study their collections. Prints and public sales were other possible sources for the artist. Although such works undoubtedly provided a source of motifs for Gérard, it is, however, her use of them to create a mood and environment of her own that distinguishes her from being a mere imitator. In ‘Le petit messager’ the dog in the lower left corner provides an anecdotal side to the painting presenting, with its left paw raised, a rose and a billet doux from the lady’s admirer. It is not known whether the petit messager belongs to the boy peeking from behind the screen, the lady’s lover or admirer or the lady herself. While it is true that such animals often had an overt symbolic function in seventeenth-century works, it seems unlikely that they should be interpreted in this way in our painting. Although dogs often symbolize fidelity in works of this type, the dog has a more anecdotal role, enlivening the quiet, restrained mood of the scene that is so typical of the artist’s oeuvre.
Born in 1761, Gérard moved to Paris in 1775, where she lived with her sister Marie-Anne and her sister’s husband Fragonard in their quarters in the Louvre. She became his protégé and may well have collaborated with him in the 1780s (e.g. First Steps of Childhood, c.1780-83; The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA). She lived for the next 30 years in the Louvre, where she was able to study masterpieces of art – an important factor given that, as a woman, she was deprived of an academic training. By 1785, she had become a respected genre painter, the first French woman to do so, and, alongside artists such as Vallayer-Coster and Vigée-Lebrun, was one of the leading female artists in France. An accomplished portrait painter, she exhibited at the Salon from 1799 to 1824. Her work was popularized through engravings by Gérard Vidal, Robert de Launay and her brother Henri Gérard. Although her favourite themes were maternal roles, she herself never married, pursuing instead a long and successful career until her death in 1837.
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| Provenance: Sale Cardinal Fesch, Rome, 26 March, 1845, no. 786, p. 34 (Le fidèle messager); thence acquired by Galerie Cailleux, Paris by the grand-parents of the previous owner.
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Literature: A. Bellier de la Chavignerie, Dictionnaire Général des Artistes de l'école française, Paris, 1882, p. 638; P. Marmottan, L'Ecole française de peinture, 1789-1830, Paris, 1886, p. 275; J. Doin, Marguerite Gérard, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1912, p. 436; S. Wells-Robertson, Marguerite Gérard, New York University, Ph.D., 1978, vol. II, no. 77, reproduced.
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| Exhibited: Salon de 1810, Paris, no. 365 (Le petit messager ou L'occupation interrompue); Les Époques, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1933, no. 81, p. 43.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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