2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

10
Jean-Louis Demarne, called Demarnette
(Brussels 1744 – 1829 Paris)
In its evocation of rural life The Horse Market looks
back to Dutch art of the seventeenth-century, which
was to be a lifelong source of inspiration for Demarne.
The merriment of the scene and the grey piebald horse
recalls the works of the van Ostade brothers and
Philips Wouwerman. As with Wouwerman’s A Horse
Fair in Front of a Town in the English Royal
Collection, 1 the viewers attention is drawn to the
centre of our work where the light is focused. There is
also an echo of Salomon von Ruysdael in the open
river landscape in the distance. A possible pendant
to our picture The Village Fête, with the same
measurements and a similar composition was in the
collection of Henry Say and sold, together with
twenty-one other pictures, by the George Petit Galerie
on 30 Nov 1908 in Paris.
At the age of twelve Demarne left his native Brussels
for Paris, where he studied history painting under
Gabriel Briard (1729 - 77). Having failed to win the
Prix de Rome in 1772 and 1774, he concentrated on
landscape and genre painting, in which he was heavily
influenced by such Dutch seventeenth-century masters
as Aelbert Cuyp, the van Ostade brothers, Adriaen van
de Velde and Karel Dujardin. In this respect, Demarne
pursued a Northern tradition of landscape painting,
while his contemporaries, such as Achille-Etna
Michallon, adhered to the Southern tradition of the
The Horse Market
Oil on canvas
21 1 /2 x 32 1 /4 in. (55 x 82cm.)
38
classical landscape which had been recently revived by
Valenciennes in the guise of the paysage historique.
Works by Dutch artists were highly sought after in
Paris at the time, and, in reviving their art and
transposing it to a contemporary setting, Demarne
won a strong following among leading connoisseurs
and artist-collectors of the time: Josephine Bonaparte
(who owned four paintings), Carle Vernet, the Baron
Gros and M. Thomas Henry. He was also popular in
Russia, and many of his best works were bought by
Russian aristocrats (for example, Prince Youssoupoff).
Arguably his biggest supporter was the Comte de
Nape, who owned thirty-one pictures by the artist and
published a short biography of him in 1817.
In 1783 Demarne was made an associate of the
Académie but he did not become a full member.
Seemingly uninterested in official honours, he was a
very commercially minded artist, exhibiting in the
Paris Salons from 1783 to 1827. Largely apolitical, he
did not participate in the French Revolution and was
only a very peripheral figure in Napoleon’s patronage
of the arts. Demarne was a prolific artist and the
repetitious nature of his works makes it difficult to
establish a chronology for his oeuvre. His principal
subjects were the village or town fair and road scenes.