Léon-Jean-Basile Perrault

Doliber, Goodale Co., Boston (by 1893)
Galerías La Granja, Mexico City
Private Collector, Witchita, Kansas (acquired from the above, 1961)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Paris, Salon, 1891, no. 1293
Chicago, World Columbian Exposition, 1893

Anton Proust, Le Salon de 1891, Paris, 1891, illustrated p. 13

This work has an old, protective wood backing and the canvas' reverse was not viewed. Old varnish has yellowed, spots of loss to extreme left corner of surface with alligatoring craquelure in baby's body. Under UV: No inpainting apparent.
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Soon after the close of the Paris Salon of 1891, Perrault’s Le reveil de l’Amour was purchased by the Doliber, Goodale Co., to hang in their “Mellin’s Food Exhibit” at the World Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair), Chicago in 1893.  The Boston-based company had secured American distribution rights of the British Mellin’s Food products for babies, and Perrault’s cherubic subject was the ideal embodiment of the quality ingredients and nutritional values that promised good health.  Reporting on the display, one writer merged art appreciation with advertising:  “Perrault seems to have caught the idea of childhood’s innocent loveliness…. Perfect physical development means perfect health, and no child can be well and contented if he does not receive suitable food in a proper manner” (“Publisher’s Notes," The Menorah, vol, XV, 1893, p. 63).   Customers were invited to send Doliber, Goodale Co. a Mellin’s Food wrapper, and in turn they would receive a “handsome copy of this famous picture” (“Publisher’s Notes,” p. 62).  After the exhibition closed,  a lithograph of the painting was used as one of the first examples of color advertising, circulated in 650,000 copies of Youth’s Companion magazine at the then-incredible cost of $14,000  (Henry Lewis Bird, The Fascinating Advertising Business, n. p., 2008, p. 43).  By the turn of the nineteenth century, Le reveil de l’Amour was a widely recognized image in American popular culture.