2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

Provenance: Anon. Sale; Paris, 24 December 1821, lot
10, as 'Intérieur d'appartement offrant le sujet de deux
jeunes personnes occupées à la lecture d'une lettre',
(Possibly) Général Ribourt. Sale, Drouot, Paris, 25 -
26 March 1895, lot 21; Muhlbacher. Sale, Paris, 14
May 1907, lot 28, erroneously states that the painting
was exhibited in the Salon of 1806; Seligmann
collection, 1937; Anon. Sale, Galerie Charpentier,
Paris, 10 June 1954, lot 28; Bruni-Tedeschi collection.
Literature: S. Wells-Robertson, Marguerite Gérard,
unpublished dissertation, New York, 1978, II, pt. 2,
p. 846, no. 70a.
Exhibited: Salon du Louvre, 1806.
Born in 1761, Gérard moved to Paris in 1775 where
she lived with her sister Marie-Anne and her sister’s
husband Fragonard in their quarters in the Louvre. She
became his protégé and may well have collaborated
with him in the 1780s (see First Steps of Childhood,
circa 1780-83; The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge,
MA). She lived for the next 30 years in the Louvre,
where she was able to study masterpieces of art – an
important factor given that, as a woman, she was
deprived of an academic training. While Fragonard's
tutelage was important to her technical development,
it was her interest in Dutch masters of the 17th century
that truly characterized her work. It was from these
"conversation pieces" that she drew inspiration for her
sentimental themes and learned to indulge in
meticulous detail. While her canvases record the
privileged and secluded lives of educated women of her
own time, they also look forward to the domestic genre
scenes that became so popular later in the nineteenth
century. By 1785, she had become a respected genre
painter, the first French woman to do so, and,
alongside artists such as Vallayer-Coster and Vigée-
Lebrun, was one of the leading women artists in
France. An accomplished portrait painter, she was a
regular contributor to the Salon from 1799 to 1824,
after the restriction on women exhibitors was lifted.
Her work was further popularized through engravings.
24
Marguerite Gérard
(Grasse 1761 – 1837 Paris)
La Bonne Nouvelle
Signed lower left: Mle gérard
Oil on panel
25 5 /8 x 21 1 /8 in. (65.1 x 53.7 cm.)
74
This painting and indeed Le Petit Messager and
La Chat Angora, both presently with Colnaghi, are
typical of the types of paintings that the artist exhibited
around the nineteenth century depicting the idealized
private world of bourgeois women.
The Colnaghi painting is one of three known versions
of this subject painted by Marguerite Gérard. 1 Three
versions are recorded by Sarah Wells-Robertson: 2 a
painting on canvas that was exhibited at the Salon of
1804 (Robertson, no. 70, 62 x 51 cm.); the Colnaghi
version on panel (Robertson, no. 70a, 64 x 53 cm.);
and a smaller version on canvas (Robertson, no.70b,
26 x 20 cm.).
Our painting is unmistakably the second version of the
1804 Salon picture. It has the differentiating
characteristics mentioned by Robertson - the bow on
the bodice worn by the lady standing and the swept
back fringe of her hair. This painting also dates to
1804, at which time Robertson describes Gérard as,
"at the peak of her career, and the Grande dame of
French genre painting". She also notes that "La Bonne
Nouvelle is a quintessential example of the Gérardian
genre picture”. 3 La Bonne Nouvelle depicts two wealthy
young women reading a letter amidst sumptuous
surroundings of a boudoir, the viewer is left to
interpret the content, perhaps with romantic inuendos.
The restrained interior scene is enlivened by the
narcissistic spaniel admiring himself, and his blue
ribbon, in the mirror. While it is true that animals
often had an overt symbolic function in seventeenthcentury
works, in our picture the spaniel adds a jovial
touch to the scene. Gérard’s figures are enclosed in a
safe and sealed world. It is an environment, elegant and
refined, that she constructs from familiar motifs drawn
from earlier sources and yet rearranges quite uniquely
to create a world that is all her own.