EDUARD CHARLEMONT | THE CARD GAME

Private Collection, Austria;

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 16 April 2013, lot 127.

"At first glance this scene might be mistaken for a seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, in the manner of Pieter de Hooch. The intimate domestic setting with the interaction of mother and child was a specialty of De Hooch, although the fish net and model ship before the window might strike one as incongruent for a Dutch golden age picture. What also sets this painting apart from such precedents is the relatively large scale on which it is painted: it stands over four feet tall without the frame. For me it strikes a perfect balance between intimacy and monumentality."

Otto Naumann

Eduard Charlemont (1848 – Vienna – 1906) was the son of the painter Matthias Adolf Charlemont, the brother of Hugo a painter and engraver and Theodor a sculptor. By 1863 Eduard was already a drawing instructor at a girls’ secondary school. He studied at the Vienna Academy under Eduard Engerth and by 1870 had importantly entered the atelier of Hans Makart. Makart further encouraged him to complete his studies in Italy and particularly Venice, with later travels to Germany. Charlemont would eventually settle in Paris for thirty years and achieve great success. He exhibited in the Paris Salons and in 1878 received an honorable mention, a third class medal in 1885 as well as a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1895. His works became much sought after and was especially renowned for his portraits, particularly those of children. He executed genre subjects that emulated the styles of Pieter de Hooch, Frans van Mieris, Johannes Vermeer and Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, all of whom he idolized. He was equally famous for executing large paintings and murals. He completed three massive ceiling paintings for the Burg Theater in Vienna. Other works by the artist are in the Wien Museum, Vienna, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Oblastní Galerie V. Liberci, Liberec, Czech Republic. Charlemont’s works overall are highly imaginative compositions mixed with wit and charm, executed with great skill and elegance, which reveal a facile handling of paint that render exquisite details and brilliant colors.¹ The Card Game is an excellent example of Charlemont’s oeuvre. Painted on panel and in marvelous condition, this painting of a Dutch fisherwoman and her child illustrates the artist’s technical skill and creative ability. The subject of peaceful domesticity also reflects Charlemont’s debt to Dutch genre painting of the seventeenth century.

1. Biographical information taken from John Denison Champlin, Jr. & Charles C. Perkins, eds., “Eduard Charlemont” in Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, volume I, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887, p. 271; A Collection of Paintings Representing Leading Masters of the Early English and Modern European Schools, catalogue The Sedelmeyer Galleries, Paris at the Ortgies Galleries, New York, 1898, p. 46; Thieme-Becker, “Eduard Charlemont” in Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, Thieme and Becker eds., volume VI, Veb E.A. Seeman Verlag, Leipzig, p. 392; Benezit, op. cit., p. 672; and Walter Koschatzky, Viennese Watercolors, New York, p. 274.