Jean Michelin

Art market, Paris, 1923-1925;
Van den Kerchove collection, Holland;
Comtesse de Pethéon;
With Knoedler & Cie.;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 8 December 1972, lot 88, for 9,500 Guineas to T. Rogers & Co;
Bequeathed by Dr. Rau to the Foundation of the German Committee for UNICEF.

New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Vouet to Rigaud, 1967, no. 39;
Remagen, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Superfranzösisch Kunstkammer Rau, 16 September 2010 – 27 February 2012.

P. Jamot, 'Autour des Le Nain: un disciple Inconnu: Jean Michelin', in Revue de l'Art, 1933, vol. LXIII, p. 216, no. 3, reproduced p. 212;
Possibly J. Thuillier, ‘Jean Michelin’, in Les Frères Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1978, pp. 343, under no. 82 (with incorrect measurements and as dated 1652);
O. Kornhoff, Superfranzösisch Kunstkammer Rau, exhibition catalogue, Cologne 2010, pp. 34, 96, reproduced.

The canvas has been relined and has been restored to its original rectangular shape, having been previously cut to fit a frame of irregular shape. This has resulted in roughly triangular additions to all four corners, the largest at the top. The paint layer is generally well- preserved, although Ultraviolet light shows patches of retouching to the wall behind the child. There are further restored losses throughout. The painting is sold in a simple wood frame with a gilt sight edge.
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The cleaning of the Metropolitan Museum’s purchase of a Louis Le Nain in 1927 revealed a date, 1656, and a signature which Paul Jamot recognised as J. Michelin.¹ Prior to this date the only evidence of Michelin’s existence was a mention of his surname as a painter of bambocciate subjects in the 1693-5 memoirs of a certain Louis-Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne. Loménie was recalling his youth in Paris as Secrétaire d’Etat between 1655-63:

Bourdon et Michelin, le faiseur de bamboches, qu’il vendait à la foire pour des tableaux de Le Nain, étoient deux dangereux copistes, des fourbes achieves en fait de copies…²

We learn thus that Michelin sold his pictures at fairs passing them off as works by the Le Nain brothers. By 1933 Jamot had grouped together an oeuvre of six paintings by Michelin, including the present lot, centered around the signed Metropolitan picture. Today his known oeuvre consists of at least twenty paintings.

Each of Michelin’s street scenes is characterised by an intense réalisme that depicts the true undercarriage of Parisian society. They are as characteristic and descriptive as any such contemporary or future painterly or literary example of this most favoured artistic idiom, the Parisian underclass, a genre that reached its zenith two centuries later in the novels of Emile Zola. Each such work by Michelin follows the same compositional principle: a frieze-like arrangement of family members sit and stand with a raft of accessories before a timbered building. They resemble stage-sets, with the participants seemingly posing for the artist, an arrangement that allowed for Michelin’s characterful portrayal of young, old, male and female and, particularly, of the bedraggled and ill-fitting rags that his protagonists wear. They are all painted in the same somewhat monochromatic and subdued tones, akin to those of the Le Nain but certainly with a mood of their own. This painting, like the Baker’s cart in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Poultry seller in the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, was undoubtedly painted in the 1650s.³



1. See J. Thuillier, ‘Jean Michelin’, in Les Frères Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1978, pp. 341-2, cat. no. 82, reproduced.
2. Ibid., p. 339.
3. For the Raleigh picture see Ibid., pp. 342-3, cat. no. 83, reproduced.