Marguerite Gérard

Anonymous sale ("Property from a European Private Collection"), London, Sotheby's, 8 December 2011, lot 262;
Where purchased by the present owner.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined and still seems to be stretched on its original stretcher. In the lower left of the painting to the right of the armchair, there is a small restoration which is visible to the naked eye. There is one other loss in the darkest part of the background in the upper center. This is a very fine canvas and paint layer, and it seems that the condition is particularly good.
"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."

This work is a beautiful example of Marguerite Gérard's most commercial compositions: lavish interior scenes featuring upper class French women and their families. Gérard is noted for her meticulous attention to luxurious details within her genre scenes, contrasted in their sharp rendering by Gérard's penchant for softly modeled figures. A Family in an Interior Playing with a Dog exudes a serenity allusive of the rarified social atmosphere the sitters in Gérard’s domestic interiors enjoyed, and this motif is only reinforced in the poses and garb of her subjects.   

Marguerite Gérard was born in Grasse but moved to Paris in 1775 to live with her elder sister Marie-Anne and Marie-Anne’s husband, the painter Jean Honoré Fragonard. Gérard became Fragonard’s protégé, and while living with her sister and brother-in-law at their quarters in the Louvre, she was surrounded by the greatest works of art in Europe, specifically drawing inspiration from the Dutch interior scenes of the 17^th century. Gérard became one of the first female French genre painters, and by the late 1780s she had established her reputation as one of the leading female artists in France.