HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR | DEUX FILLETTES JOUANT AVEC UN CHIEN (FRAGMENT OF LES PÈLERINS D'EMMAÜS COPY AFTER VERONESE)

F & J Tempelaere, Paris 

George Haviland, Paris (and sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 30-July 1, 1948, lot 345, illustrated as the original composition before the two fragments were separated)

Joseph Soustiel, Paris 

Renee Halbedl, Hawaii

A North American Museum (bequeathed from the above in 1963 and sold, Sotheby's, New York, February 24, 1988, lot 19, illustrated)

Iida Gallery, Tokyo  

Madame Fantin-Latour, Catalogue de l'Oeuvre Complet de Fantin-Latour, Paris, 1911, p. 53, no. 394 (as Les enfants du centre)

Paris, Galerie Tempelaere, Exposition de l'atelier de Fantin-Latour, January 1905, no. 26 (as Les enfants du centre) 

Painted circa 1870-73, the present lot is a copy of a detail in Paolo Veronese's Les pèlerins d'Emmaüs (circa 1559, Musée du Louvre, Paris, fig. 1). Deux fillettes jouant avec un chien was originally part of a larger composition by Fantin-Latour that included the figure of the crouching boy in black holding a small dog, seen in Veronese's painting on the right-hand side. The present work of the two little girls was cut away in 1948 and the two fragments were sold separately at Hôtel Drouot by George Haviland. The original work with both fragments still intact is illustrated in the 1948 catalogue (fig. 2).