Alexandre Marie Colin

Sale: Drouot-Estimations, Paris, 4 June, 1999, lot 50
Private collection, France
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 29 May, 2008, lot 63
Acquired from above by present owner

Born in Paris in 1798, Colin was a pupil of Girodet and close friend of Théodore Gericault and Eugène Delacroix, with whom he shared a studio in the 1820s and worked with as a lithographer. 

Colin’s painting illustrates a scene from Jean-Francois Marmontel’s (1723-1799) novel Les Incas, ou la destruction de l’Empire du Pérou (The Incas or the Destruction of the Empire of Peru), published in Paris in 1777, that recounts three historic events: the destruction of the empires of Mexico and Peru, and the rampaging of Central America by the Spanish military. Based on historical accounts, Marmontel's novel achieves a striking balance between contemporary secular and non-secular accounts.

Here, Inca mothers offer their daughters as potential brides to the Castilian soldier Alonzo Molina, a moment illustrated in the original publication and captioned: "Deign to consent, they tell him, to this young and sweet companion" (chapter 19).  Molina was dispatched on a reconnaissance trip to the Inca territory to form a plan of attack. However, he was so moved by the "naive and tender friendship" of the indigenous people he encountered that he resolved to remain at their sides.

As early as the 1820s, Colin embarked on the project of creating illustrations to be published with Marmontel’s book. Although the venture was never fully realized, the themes explored in the book inspired many works on paper and, in the 1840s, on canvas, including a pair of paintings shown at the 1848 Paris Salon.