Jean Béraud

C. Wright
Sale: Christie's, London, October 3, 1975, lot 78, illustrated
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, May 5, 1999, lot 330, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Paris, Salon, 1926, no. 92

Toulouse-Lautrec, exh. cat., New Haven, 1991, p. 514, illustrated p. 512
Patrick Offenstadt, Jean Béraud 1849-1935, The Belle Epoque: A Dream of Times Gone By, Catalogue Raisonné, Köln, 1999, p. 239, no. 313, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been quite recently lined, cleaned and restored. The canvas has been lined with a synthetic glue and the paint layer has been cleaned, varnished and retouched. The retouches are mostly visible under ultraviolet light here and there in small spots, addressing some losses in the darker colors in the lower right and in the gowns of the magistrate, in the forehead of the young woman making the argument and in a few spots in the group of people behind her on the left. The bulk of the restoration is in the upper wall of the chambers where some slight thinness has been addressed. Overall however, the condition is respectable.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

"The first woman law student was Mlle Jeanne Chauvin. In 1892, she received her doctorate in law, with a dissertation on the professions open to women, and applied for admission to the bar.  In spite of a touching plea that she had spent ten years of her youth and considerable money to qualify herself for a profession she loved, she was told that to admit her would be 'contrary to the progress of civilization.' The feminist Maria Deraismes was extremely sarcastic about this decision: she wondered aloud if judges were afraid of being seduced by women lawyers, or whether they feared that one might give birth in court.  It took years of effort (until 1900) and the personal intervention of statesmen like Poincaré and Viviani to have the legal profession declared open to women on the same terms as men. A few weeks after this decree, Mlle Chauvin was admitted to practice. (In 1925 she received the Legion of Honor.) Still by 1914 only about twenty-eight women had taken their oath in court as lawyers, and of these only a dozen were practicing" (Priscilla Robertson, An Experience of Women: Pattern and Change in Nineteenth Century Europe, Philadelphia, 1982, pp. 335-36).