Catalogue 2010 - daxer & marschall

CHARLES HOGuET
A Pumpkin on a Cane-Seated Chair
Charles Hoguet
(1821 - Berlin - 1870)
A Pumpkin on a Cane-Seated Chair,
1853
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated C. Hoguet 1853
99 x 65.5 cm
Provenance:
N. J. Oppenheimer, Sweden 1
48
Charles Hoguet 2 studied in Paris. By the 1850s he had come to rank alongside Adolph Menzel
(1815-1905) as one of the few still life painters of international standing in Germany. As his subjects
he chose simple objects, vegetables, kitchen utensils, dead game and humble household objects.
His realism was highly distinctive and was undoubtedly inspired by the work of Gustave Courbet
(1819-77) who played a decisive role in revolutionizing genre painting. 3
A Pumpkin on a Cane-Seated Chair is one of a group of variations on a similar subject executed
in the mid-1850s. A related version is in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 4 Here
too, the subject matter is emphatically reduced and the composition focusses on a pumpkin, a knife,
a chair and a cloth set against a uniform black-brown background.
Hoguet was born in Berlin and came of Huguenot stock. He was in close contact with
members of the French colony in the city. He studied marine painting in 1839 under the Berlin artist
Wilhelm August Krause (1803-64). In 1840-3, continuing his studies in Paris, he was associated with
Eugène Cicéri (1813-90) and Eugène Isabey (1804-86). The award of a gold medal, albeit second
class, at the Paris Salon in 1848 brought him considerable public acclaim. He decided to return to
Berlin permanently but continued to travel extensively on study tours in France, the Netherlands,
England and Scotland right up to the end of his life.
He began work on a inventory of his own extensive œuvre in 1859. His paintings are held in
leading collections throughout Germany. Seven alone were in the possession of the Nationalgalerie
in Berlin, however only one survived the bombing in World War II. He also produced landscapes
and marine paintings but his real strength lay in the still life genre. He reached the peak of his
artistic powers in the period around 1850-60.
1. Oppenheimer was a leading collector and painter of still lifes. He was known as Jonny Hoppenheimer (1923-2008).
2. Literature: Egbert Lammers, Charles Hoguet. Ein Beitrag zur Berliner Kunstgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1933 (Diss., university of
Bonn, 1931); id., ‘Charles Hoguet. 1821-1870’, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte II, 1933, pp. 279-89; Irmgard Wirth, Berliner Malerei im
19. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1990, pp. 370- and p. 376, fig. 477; Helmut Börsch-Supan, Die Deutsche Malerei von Anton Graff bis Hans von Marées
1760-1870, Munich 1988, pp. 85, 328, 336 and 498.
3. The Düsseldorf artist Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803-89) specialized in conservative still lifes. His precise style of execution was guided
by Dutch baroque painting.
4. A Pumpkin on a Cane-Seated Chair, 1853, Alte Nationalgalerie, SMPK, Berlin; Still Life with a Cat, 1857, Raehmel Collection, Berlin
(see E. Lammers in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte II, 1933, fig. 7).