Carl Ernst von Stetten

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, October 23, 2007, lot 102, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Salon des Artistes Français, 1888, no. 2491
Munich, Internationalen Kunstaustellung, 1888, no. 2232
Chicago, World's Columbian Exposition, no. 121 
Dresden, Akademiesche Kunst-Ausstellung, 1894
Berlin, Berliner Kunst-Ausstellung, 1894
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Art Galleries, no. 62

The work is in its original unlined state. The surface is clean and the colors remain bright. Under UV: an area of finely painted dashes of retouching are visible at upper center to the left of the man's face. Finely applied, scattered spots, pinpoint dots and dashes of retouching are visible in the sky and architecture, on the figures, and in the foreground and wicker basket. Fine dashes of inpainting to address prior frame abrasion are visible around the perimeter.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Carl von Stetten was a Bavarian portrait and genre painter who joined the Parisian atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme in the 1880s. Here he became close friends with fellow artists Pascale Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret and Gustave Courtois, who would become his lifelong companion. Dagnan-Bouveret used his friends as models frequently, as seen in a painting he gifted to Gérôme, Hamlet et les Fossoyeurs (1884, Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, fig. 1), where Courtois is featured as Horatio and Stetten as Hamlet.

A comparable work by Stetten, The Image Seller (1887, whereabouts unknown), was included in the collection of George I. Seney (who is listed in Edward Strahan’s Art Treasures of America). The auction catalogue of his collection describes the scene: “An Italian vender of plaster images has set his wares up for sale on one of the bridges crossing the Seine. A portion of his stock is displayed on the balustrade against which he leans. His extra supply is packed in a wicker basket… a steamboat, passing on the river, is seen through the balustrade, and in the distance the towers of the Trocadero are outlined against the gray sky of a Parisian autumn or spring” (Mr. George I. Seney’s Important Collection of Modern Paintings, American Art Galleries, New York, February 11, 12 and 13, lot 254).

The two smock-clad artisans pictured on the banks of the Seine are surely mouleurs de plâtres, selling plaster casts of well-known sculptures. At left there is a cast of a Tanagra terracotta figure, named after the Greek town where the small sculptures that were excavated in the nineteenth century; to the right is a large plaster cast after the bronze statue Narcissus from the Naples National Museum (fig. 2), which was discovered in a humble Pompeiian home in 1862 and extensively copied for domestic settings (Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven and London, 1982, p. 270); at the far right is a cast of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Winter, 1787.