Arturo Michelena (1863-1898)

Enrique Planchart, Arturo Michelena, Catálogo y Estudio Preliminar, Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Dirección de Cultura,1948, p. 20, illustration of the study
Juan Calzadilla, Michelena, Ernesto Armitano Editor, Caracas, 1973, p. 92, illustration of the study 
Pintores Venezolanos, Tomo 1, Ediciones Edime, Madrid, 1974, p. 64, illustration of the study 
María Cristina Capriles, Arturo Michelena: Su Obra y su Tiempo, Caracas, Ediciones Banco Industrial, 1989, no. 1, p. 37, illustration of the study
Galería de Arte Nacional, Colección de Pinturas, Dibujos y Estampas del Siglo XIX, Catálogo General, Caracas, 1993, p. 60, illustration of the study
Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas, Genio y Gloria de Arturo Michelena, Caracas, Galería de Arte Nacional, Centennial Exhibition, 1998, no. 1, pp. 46-47, illustration of the study
Lucila Anzola, Arturo Michelena: Intimidad y Esplendor de su Genio, Caracas, Galeria de Arte Nacional, p. 52, illustration of the study

We wish to thank Mr. Axel Stein and Ms. Elizabeth Gorayeb for their kind assistance in researching this lot.

Arturo Michelena was Venezuela’s most renowned painter of the nineteenth century. Thus it is very exciting that one of his most famous paintings, L’Enfant Malade, lost since 1926, has been found.

Born in 1863 in Valencia, Venezuela, Michelena traveled to Paris in 1885, spending most of his time between the Academie Julien, where he studied under Jean Paul Laurens, and the atelier on rue Delambre which he shared with fellow artist Cristóbal Rojas. Michelena urgently needed recognition in order to start selling his paintings and gain independence from the ever changing moods of Venezuelan presidents, in particular Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who would ultimately cancel his scholarship at the time the artist was executing his first drawings and oil preparatory sketches for L’Enfant Malade in the winter of 1886.

Michelena presented this monumental work L’Enfant Malade to the 1887 Paris Salon. It won the Gold Medal, Second Class, the highest honor a foreign artist could receive at the Salon. This prize implied that he would automatically be invited hors-concours for future editions. The jury, presided over by William Bouguereau, did not award a first prize that year, making L’Enfant Malade the highest medal of the 1887 Salon.

Although the Galería de Arte Nacional in Caracas houses the final preparatory version of this composition, and the Museo Michelena in Caracas and Banco Industrial de Venezuela treasure small oil sketches and drawings, the location of this finished painting has been unknown since it was last sold in the 1926 Vincent Astor sale in New York. Following a trail of documents, Sotheby’s found that the buyer had been a Floridian developer and art collector, Mr. Owen Burns, a business partner of John Ringling, the circus magnate and patron of the arts. The painting was traced to the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota where it has been carefully kept in custody for the Burns Estate since the late 1940’s. We are thankful to the Paintings Curator at the Ringling, Mr. Aaron de Groft, for the research leading to the reconstruction of the provenance and the whereabouts of this painting.