Jeanne Elisabeth Chaudet Paris 1767 - 1832

bidding is closed

Description

Jeanne Elisabeth Chaudet
A young girl carrying her father's sabre
oil on canvas

Provenance

Porlitz (deceased) sale, Paris, Féral, Paulme & Lasquin, 17-19 November 1910;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Piasa, 18 December 1996, lot 48, where acquired by the present collector.

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1817, no. 152 ("Portrait d'Enfant portant le sabre de son père").

Literature

Explication des Ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture et gravure, des artistes vivans, exposés au Musée Royal des Arts le 24 avril 1817, Paris 1817, p. 17, no. 152;
E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, ed. Paris 1999, p. 532.

Catalogue Note

Jeanne Elisabeth Chaudet, née Gabiou, was a painter of portraits, landscapes, mythological and genre scenes. A pupil of the famous female painter Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), she was also apprenticed to the sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763-1810), whom she later married. She seems to have been an established artist in her own right for her paintings were exhibited at the Salon in Paris from 1798 until 1817; the year in which this picture was almost certainly shown (see under Exhibited and Literature below). Although few paintings by Chaudet are known, she seems to have shown a particular predilection for painting young children engaged in everyday activities: examples include her Young girl eating cherries (for which she received a Prix d’Encouragement at the Salon of 1812; today in the Musée Marmottan, Paris), A child wearing a lancer’s costume (c.1808; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras), A girl teaching her dog to read (exhibited at the Salon of 1799; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Rochefort), A girl feeding chicks (exhibited at the Salon of 1802 and later acquired by the Empress Josephine, for the gallery at Malmaison; Napoleonmuseum, Schloß Arenenberg), and her signed Girl showing drawings from a sketchbook (offered, Monaco, Sotheby’s, 17 June 1988, lot 910). These paintings, which have much in common with the present canvas, all show specific children but cannot be described as “portraits” in the traditional sense, even though the figures are almost certainly studied from life. The marmoreal quality of the girl’s pale skin in this painting is characteristic of Chaudet’s work and may have been inspired by her husband’s activity as a sculptor. Widowed in 1812, Chaudet later remarried and her second husband, Pierre-Arsène-Denis Husson, is the subject of a portrait by her today in the museum in Arras.

This painting was said to be a portrait of Madame Villot, née Barbier, following an inscription on a carbon print made after the painting by Braun, Clément & Co., Paris (Witt Library mount).