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
Private Collection, United States
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, April 24, 2009, lot 77, illustrated
Private Collector
Acquired from the above 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 Époque: A Dream of Times Gone By, Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne, 1999, p. 239, no. 313, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work has been restored, although probably not recently. It looks well nonetheless. The canvas has a 40 or 50 year old English lining. The varnish seems slightly soft, but is attractive. Under ultraviolet light, one can see that the only retouches in the lower half of the picture seem to be in a few spots in the dark robes of the male figures on the right. The bulk of the retouches can be found in the dark walls of the chambers, particularly in the upper left, where some thinness has been reduced.
"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 and applied for admission to the bar. Despite her defense that she had spent ten years of her youth and considerable money to qualify herself for a profession she loved, she was denied admittance. The feminist Maria Deraismes was extremely critical of this decision, wondering aloud if judges were afraid of being seduced by women lawyers, or whether they feared that one might give birth in court.  It was not until 1900, after years of effort, and the personal intervention of statesmen like Poincaré and Viviani, that the legal profession was declared open to women on the same terms as men. A few weeks after this decree, Mlle Chauvin was admitted to practice and in 1925, she received the Legion of Honor. Still by 1914 only about twenty-eight women had taken the lawyer's oath in court, and of these only a dozen practiced (Priscilla Robertson, An Experience of Women: Pattern and Change in Nineteenth Century Europe, Philadelphia, 1982, pp. 335-6).