Attributed to Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier Rouen 1743 - 1824 Paris

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Description

Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier
allegorical female figure
black chalk

Provenance

With Jean Cailleux, Paris, by whom given to Mrs. Nijstad-Einhorn in 1962;
Saam and Lily Nijstad, The Hague, inv. no. N 424

Exhibited

The Hague, Grenzeloos Goed, Tekeningen uit de Unicorno Collectie, Haags Historisch Museum, 3 March-27 May 2001, cat. no. 12

Literature

Kleur en Raffiniement, Tekeningen uit de Unicorno Collectie, Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, and Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, 1994-5, pp. 8-9, 14, reproduced (as Jean-Honoré Fragonard)

Catalogue Note

Although this was previously attributed by Cailleux to Fragonard, Pierre Rosenberg has made the much more convincing proposal that it is by Lemonnier. Having won the Prix de Rome in 1772, Lemonnier studied and worked in Rome from 1774 until 1779, before returning to Paris, where he established himself as a highly successful painter and academician. From 1810 until 1816, he was director of the Royal Gobelins tapestry manufactury, and received the Legion d'Honneur in 1814. In the Louvre there are two albums containing hundreds of drawings by the artist, most of them sketches after the antique and figure studies in black chalk, which are closely comparable in style with the present work (two reproduced, The Hague 2001, p. 35, figs. 12.1 and 12.2).