François-André Vincent

This study is preparatory for the left half of Vincent's painting, The Ploughing Lesson which was mentioned in the Livret du Salon of 1798 and is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.  The painting was commissioned by Bernard Boyer-Fonfrède, an important patron and manufacturer who ran a textile factory in Toulouse at the end of the 18th century, and was intended to be part of a series, illustrating the virtues and the foundations of a good education, to decorate his private mansion in Toulouse.  Begun in 1793, The Ploughing Lesson took Vincent five years to complete, and the other paintings in the series were never executed.

Several studies and oil sketches for the painting are known. Two drawings are identified by Jean-Pierre Cuzin: the first, dated 1795, is in the collection of M. Louis-Antoine Prat, and is a fully-worked up study, showing an alternative composition which the artist must have rejected.  The second, in a Parisian private collection, is closer to the present sheet and dated 1797, although is preparatory for the final composition in full.¹  Several related oil sketches are also in public and private collections: one belonged to the Count of Mimerel, another to M. Bruno Calvet, and a third was sold Monaco, Sotheby's, 18 June 1992, lot 68 and was bought by the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.

The composition of the present drawing is very close to the final painting: in a field, a mother and her young daughter are listening carefully to the explanations given by a ploughman to his son who handles the plow.  The scene is typical of the late 18th century pre-romantic movement, initiated by intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wrote in Emile (vol. III): "The first and most respectful of all the arts is agriculture".

1. See J.-P. Cuzin, François-André Vincent 1746-1816, Cahiers du dessin français, no. 4, Paris, p. 22, cat. nos. 53-4