2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

Provenance: Sale Cardinal Fesch, Rome, 26 March,
1845, no. 786, p. 34 (Le fidèle messager); thence
acquired by Galerie Cailleux, Paris by the grandparents
of the previous owner.
Exhibited: Salon de 1810, Paris, no. 365 (Le petit
messager ou L'occupation interrompue); Les Époques,
Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1933, no. 81, p. 43.
Literature: A. Bellier de la Chavignerie, Dictionnaire
Général des Artistes de l'école française, Paris, 1882,
p. 638; P. Marmottan, L'Ecole française de peinture,
1789-1830, Paris, 1886, p. 275; J. Doin, Marguerite
Gérard, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1912,
p. 436; S. Wells-Robertson, Marguerite Gérard, New
York University, Ph.D., 1978, vol. II, no. 77,
reproduced.
The Colnaghi painting is a fine example of an intimate
interior genre scene by Marguerite Gérard that would
have appealed greatly to the public and the critics of
the period. Although Gérard studied, and may even
have collaborated, with her brother-in-law Jean-
Honoré Fragonard, she appears to have eschewed the
sensuality and eroticism that characterize many of his
later works in favour of a more domesticated and
idealised portrayal of bourgeois and upper-class life. It
is perhaps understandable, given her role as a female
artist, that she focused largely on depictions of women,
usually presented in romantic or maternal roles and
often, as in our picture, accompanied by pets. 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
popular later in the nineteenth-century.
Le petit messager was part of the celebrated collection of
Cardinal Fesch sold in Rome between 1843 and 1845.
He was perhaps Marguerite Gérard’s greatest admirer,
owning around eleven paintings by her, including the
pendant of ours, A Young Girl arranging Flowers, 1
whose present location is unknown. There are
similarities between the two paintings seen in the
ladies’ hairstyles, the pensive pose of their heads and
25
Marguerite Gérard
(Grasse 1761 – 1837 Paris)
Le Petit Messager
Signed lower right: Mle Gérard
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.5 cm.)
76
the size of the canvases, however it is likely that there
were ten to fifteen years separating these paintings,
with our painting being completed later.
In the Colnaghi painting Gerard uses some of her
favourite motifs, such as a young boy peering into the
room from behind a screen which dates to the 1780s, 2
the young woman with a knee on the stool is
reminiscent of an illustration in Les Liaisons
Dangereuses of 17963 and the emotive motif of the
reflective globe appears in Le Chat Angora, 4 currently
with Colnaghi. Globes such as this one were objects of
great rarity and value, and its inclusion in another
work by Gérard suggests it was a studio prop belonging
to the artist. 5 It is not clear what the source for this
motif is, although it recalls the interest in reflective
surfaces found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Dutch and Flemish genre scenes and still-lifes (which
probably derives ultimately from the convex mirror in
Van Eyck’s famous Arnolfini Marriage in the National
Gallery, London.)
The influence of such Dutch seventeenth-century
masters as Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu and Caspar
Netscher, is evident here in the interior setting and its
romantic undertones. Other elements also recall these
petits mâitres hollandaises: the presence of pets, the
elegant rug draped over the table and the meticulous
attention to texture and detail. In Le petit messager the
dog in the lower left corner provides an anecdotal side
to the painting presenting, with its left paw raised, a
rose and a billet doux from the lady’s admirer. It is not
known whether the petit messager belongs to the boy
peeking from behind the screen, the lady’s lover or
admirer or the lady herself. While it is true that such
animals often had an overt symbolic function in
seventeenth century works, it seems unlikely that they
should be interpreted in this way in our painting.
Although dogs often symbolize fidelity in works of this
type, the dog has a more anecdotal role, enlivening the
quiet, restrained mood of the scene that is so typical
of the artist’s oeuvre.