Jules Salles-Wagner

Paris, Salon, 1887, no. 2123 

Nîmes, Musée des Beaux Arts, Jules Salles 1814-1900, February 26–April 10, 1983, p. 39, no 47 (illustrated with a photograph of the painting)

Unlined, stretcher bar mark visible across center; under UV: dots of inpainting above woman's upper lip, two dots of inpainting in her dress, a few scattered pindots of inpainting in baby's body, varnish fluoresces unevenly.
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Jules Salles-Wagner was born in the small town of Nîmes in the south of France. Nîmes' history dates back to the Roman Empire, where it was one of the wealthiest and most prosperous cities of Gaul.  In his youth, Salles-Wagner traveled extensively, visiting Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and even Egypt. He enrolled in classes at the École de Dessin de Nîmes and won the prix de peinture in 1839. He eventually studied under Paul Delaroche, and later met and married Adelheid Wagner, a successful artist in her own right. Salles-Wagner was represented by the influential art dealers Goupil et Cie, who disseminated his work to an eager public through mass reproductions. He was greatly inspired by the images of motherhood popularized by artists such as William Bouguereau, and the affection and tenderness present in La Valaisane attests to his deep affinity for the subject.

Salles-Wagner exhibited La Valaisane in the Salon of 1887. The distinctive regional costume and headscarf of the mother and simple star and flower motif decorating the cradle imply a peasant lifestyle, which for nineteenth century audiences bespoke traditional values of honesty, hard work and humility. The significance of the bond between mother and child was a relatively recent phenomenon in the nineteenth century. Fronia Wissman writes: "Only in the eighteenth century were babies and small children regarded as something other than small, messy, noisy creatures who should be kept quiet and out of sight. Childhood began to be seen as a special stage of development, and the nurture of children within the happy family unit was thought to bring parents untold satisfactions" (Bouguereau, California, 1996, p. 40).  In La Valaisane a cherubic baby squirms with delight in his mothers arms as two butterflies hover above him. To the right of the mother is a distinctive fountain. This wholly-invented structure, based on the form of a sarcophagus, can be seen in many paintings by Bouguereau and artists working in his style. Salles-Wagner incorporates the classically-inspired fountain and woodland background to reinforce the timeless quality of the idyllic scene, suggesting the eternal bond of mother and child.