Paul César Helleu

Autumn in Versailles - painting by Paul César Helleu an Impressionist Painter

Circa 1894

This painting, created during Zuccarelli's stay in England, represents the decisive moment when Macbeth, together with Banquo, meets the three witches who announce that he will be Ki...

Here Gaspard Dughet offers us an idyllic vision of the Roman countryside. The stages follow one another in a perfectly structured composition, revealing here a lake, there travellers walking along, gradually leading our eye to the blue horizon. But behind its classical composition, this landscape is particularly interesting because of three anthropomorphic details that the artist has hidden, opening the way to a radically different interpretation... 1. Gaspard Dughet, a landscape artist in the light of Poussin Gaspard Dughet was born on June 4th, 1615 in Rome where his father, of French origin, was a pastry cook. He was probably named Gaspard in honour of his godfather Baron Gaspard de Morant, who was, or may have been, his father's employer. His older sister Jeanne married the painter Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1655) on September 1st, 1630. The young Gaspard was apprenticed with his brother-in-law at the beginning of 1631, which led his entourage to name him Gaspard Poussin. The first preserved works of the painter date from the years 1633-1634 and were painted in Poussin’s studio. Around 1635, Gaspard Dughet became emancipated and began to frequent the Bamboccianti circle. In 1636, he became friends with the painter Jean Miel (1599 - 1656), but also with Pier Francesco Mola (1612 - 1666) and Pietro da Cortona (1596 - 1669). This was also the time of his first trips throughout Italy. The painter, although of French origin, appears never to have visited France. In 1646 he settled permanently in Rome. A recognized painter with a solid book of orders, he remained faithful to landscape painting throughout his life, alternating between cabinet paintings and large decorative commissions, using both oil and fresco. Nailed to his bed by rheumatic fever at the age of 58, he died on May 25, 1675. 2. Discovering an idealized landscape Beyond a relatively dark foreground that takes us into the landscape, we discover a vast bluish horizon: a plateau surrounded by deep ravines advances to the right, overhanging an expanse of water that sparkles below. A road winds through a mountainous mass as if leading us to the fortress that crowns it; another town appears in the distance at the foot of three conical mountains. The composition is rigorous, mineral, and structured by geometric volumes. The various stages in the landscape lead one to the next attracting the eye towards the horizon located in the middle of the canvas. The general impression is that of a welcoming and serene nature. In many places the paint layer has shrunk, or become transparent, revealing the dark red preparation with which the canvas was covered and accentuating the contrasts. Human presence is limited to three jack players, leaning against a mound in the foreground. Their long garments, which may evoke Roman togas, contribute to the timelessness of the scene. Close examination of the canvas reveals two other travellers on the path winding between the rocks. Made tiny by the distance, their introduction in the middle register, typical of Dughet's art, lengthens the perspective. While it is difficult to date the work of a painter who devoted his entire life to the representation of landscapes, it is certain that this painting is a work from his later years. The trees that occupied the foreground of his youthful compositions have been relegated to the sides, a stretch of water separates us from the arid mountains counterbalanced by two trees represented on the opposite bank. The introduction of this stretch of water in the middle of the landscape betrays the influence of the Bolognese and in particular of the Dominiquin (1581 - 1641) A number of similarities with a drawing in the British Museum might suggest a date around 1656-1657, since, according to Marie-Nicole Boisclair , it has been compared with the Prado's Landscape with the Repentant Magdalene, painted at that period. 3. Three amazing anthropomorphic details While some late Renaissance landscapes offer a radical double reading, allowing one to see both a face or a human body behind the representation of a landscape, it seems interesting to us to hypothesize that Gaspard Dughet had fun here by slipping in a few details that, taken in isolation, evoke human or animal figures. We will give three examples, looking closely at a cloud, the trunk of a broken tree and the top of a cliff. The main cloud could thus evoke a Christ-like face or that of an antique god...

This small landscape shows a hunting scene: two riders are chasing a stag with their dogs at the edge of a forest. Signed by Peter von Bemmel, it is typical of the production of this...

In this painting, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, the great chronicler of the reign of Louis XV, takes us to the annual parade of the Swiss Guards at the Plaine de...

Provenance: Dukes of Marlborough Collection, Blenheim Palace until its sale at Christie's London on 26 July 1886 (lot 172) English private collection until its sale at Christie's London on 11 December 1992 (lot 363) Erna Weidinger Collection (1923 - 2021) - Austria Literature : Georg Scharf - A list of the pictures in Blenheim Palace - Catalogue raisonné Part 2 - London 1862 (page 166 - number 199 "after Palma Giovane") Charles Davies...

This replica of the last self-portrait of Jean-Baptiste Greuze painted in 1804, executed by his daughter Anna at her father's side and recently rediscovered, provides us with a poignant image of the great artist, represented with panache despite the disillusions of life. 1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze Jean-Baptiste Greuze was the sixth child of a roofer from Tournus and retained a certain rusticity in his behaviour from his provincial childhood, beyond his taste for describing picturesque scenes of the countryside. He initially started training with a little-known painter from Lyon, Charles Grandon, before his genius was recognised in Paris where he became a full-time student of the Académie (of Painting) in 1755. He exhibited his work for the first time at the Salon during the summer of 1755, before leaving on a trip to Italy in the company of Louis Gougenot, abbot of Chezal-Benoît. Upon his return to Paris, Greuze became a prolific painter, participating widely in the Salons held between 1759 and 1765, to which he sent no less than 63 paintings: numerous genre scenes (The Marriage Contract, The Beloved Mother), but also portraits of his family circle, of courtiers and art lovers, or of his colleagues. The Academy closed the doors of the Salons to him in 1767 for not having produced his reception piece within six months of his reception, as was the tradition. He worked actively on this painting (Emperor Severus rebukes Caracalla, his son, for trying to assassinate him ) until the summer of 1769, tackling historical and mythological subjects for the first time. Once this was completed, he was then fully admitted to the Academy, but as a genre painter, and not as an historical painter, which had been one of the greatest humiliations of his life. Greuze then refused any participation in events organised by the Academy or its successor, the Academy of Fine Arts until 1800. Abandoning history painting, he gave a new twist to genre scenes, bringing them closer to history painting, as in this pair of canvases which constitutes some of his masterpieces: The Paternal Curse: The Ungrateful Son and The Paternal Curse: The Punished Son . Married in 1759 to Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, the daughter of a Parisian bookseller, his marriage was unhappy and his wife probably frequently unfaithful. The institution of divorce enabled him to record their separation in 1793, keeping his two daughters Anna-Geneviève, born in April 1762, and Louise-Gabrielle, born in May 1764, with him. Little is known about his daughter Anna except that she was herself a painter and lived with her father until his death. It is likely that most of the paintings she produced up to that date were attributed to her father, whose technique she shared to a great extent, making it extremely difficult to establish an autonomous corpus of her paintings. Greuze died in his studio at the Louvre on March 21st 1805. The attention paid to the expressivity of his characters and the emotional charge they convey enabled Jean-Baptiste Greuze to enjoy immense popularity with the eighteenth-century public, and they still constitute Greuze's true modernity. As the artist said, "I dipped my brush in my heart". Greuze was also an exceptional draughtsman and a portraitist of immense talent and exceptional longevity who painted both the Dauphin (the son of Louis XV and father to Louis XVI) and the young Napoleon Bonaparte. 2. Greuze's self-portraits Greuze was very much influenced by Dutch paintings during all his life. While the source of his inspiration for genre scenes can be found in Gerard Dou...

'Agay, le château et le Sémaphore'. Oil on canvas. +/- 1922 Signed lower right Measurements : 60 x 73 cm. This painting will be recorded in the second volume of the Catalogue Raisonn...

Signed and dated oil on canvas by French impressionist painter Charles Theophile Angrand. This wonderful and good-sized piece depicts an artist painting "en plain air" in a beautiful...

In the Park by Louis Abel-Truchet (French 1857-1918) *see below signed oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 16 x 13 inches provenance: private collection, France condition: overall good a...

The key to this painting's charm is that the subject is a beautiful young woman who is showing her face. We see her with her charming smile. She lounges comfortably in a carpeted bo...

A large, spectacular, absolutely splendid painting by noted French painter Georges Clairin, which appeared for auction at Christie's in 2004 (see photo...

This artwork titled "Paysage de la cote d'azur (Coastal Scene of the French Riviera)" c.1960, is an oil painting on canvas by French artist Rene Dulieu, 1903-1992. It is signed at the lower left corner by the artist. The canvas size is 21.5 x 25.85 inches, framed size is 35 x 39 inches. Custom framed in original dark brown and gold distressed frame, with fabric liner and gold color fillet. It is in excellent condition, the frame have minor restorations, practically invisible. About the artist. Self-taught painter of figurative painting. At eleven years old, it was the Great War and his Certificate of Studies in his pocket, he first worked in the fields of the village farms, then until he was 17, he was employed at the Coeuvres distillery where he is responsible for the proper functioning of the machines. In 1925 he did his military service at the barracks of St Vincent de Laon (Aisne) in the 101st heavy artillery regiment as a pointer brigadier, and he was already drawing on notebooks. At the end of his service, having chosen to go to Paris to take drawing and painting lessons, he became a cashier at the Grand Magasins du Louvre. He begins to discover Paris, its districts, its buildings, shops, churches. During the week he sets up his easel on the sidewalks of Montmartre, Notre Dame, where the Latin Quarter and on Sundays, he sells these paintings on Boulevard Raspail. He took part in the Battle of France in September 1939at june 1940. He testifies in a notebook of the events and emotions he has gone through. After the Second World War, he set up his home and studio in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, but he remained very attached to his native village where he went very regularly. Married, he takes his family almost every summer to the Côte d'Azur where he paints with great pleasure the warm colors and the intense light of the Esterel or the Var coast. He participates in many Parisian salons and exhibitions in Paris and province. Awarded at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in 1961, as well as at the Salon Violet in Paris. From 1967, Mrs. Rosenthal of the Galerie Haussmann (Paris), regularly exhibited her works on "Old Paris" which particularly appealed to British and American tourists. He participated with the painters René Demeurisse...