Marguerite Gérard

Possibly Rivière;
Anonymous sale, Paris, 24 December 1821, lot 10;
M. Le Général Ribourt;
By whom sold, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 25-26 March 1895, lot 21;
Muhlbacher;
By whom sold, Paris, 13-15 May 1907, lot 28;
Seligmann, Paris, 1937;
Anonymous sale, Paris, 10 June 1954, lot 28;
Private collection, France;
By whom sold, New York, Sotheby's, 28 May 1999, lot 207.

S. Wells-Robertson, Marguerite Gérard 1761-1837, 1978, vol. II, p. 845, cat. no. 70a.

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 on panel is uncradled. The panel is slightly curved from left to right. The painting is clean, retouched and nicely varnished. Under ultraviolet light, one can see retouches in the center right side of the screen behind the figures in the darkest shadows and in the dark shadows beneath the chair in the lower left. The floor in the lower right has received retouches. It is possible that there are retouches in the reflection of the dog in the mirror and in the red upholstery of the chair. There are retouches in the cheeks and around the chins of both figures, as well as retouches in the right breast of the figure in white. The figures' arms and some areas of their dresses also seem to be retouched. While there is a fair amount of restoration, it is well applied, and the work should be hung as is.
"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."

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.

In this painting, traditionally called "La Bonne Nouvelle," two well-dressed ladies are in an elegant boudoir; one reads a letter while the other looks over her shoulder.  A self-admiring spaniel looks into the mirror beside them.  The work is a beautiful example of Marguerite Gérard's most commercial compositions: lavish interior scenes featuring upper class French women. Gérard is noted for her meticulous attention to luxurious details within her genre scenes, contrasted in their sharp rendering by her penchant for softly modeled figures. The painting relates to another painting of the same subject by the artist, exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1804, no. 200, along with a pendant picture titled "La Mauvaise Nouvelle."¹ 

1. Oil on canvas, 62 by 51 cm., see S. Wells-Robertson, Marguerite Gérard 1761-1837, 1978, vol. II, p. 845, cat. no. 70.