XII - Christmas Catalogue - Marty de Cambiaire

in Paris and Lille with a painting named The
Game of “Main Chaude”, which was most
certainly the present work.
The few rare known works by Dunant all have
the same combination of naivety and freshness
that the present painting: these are small
charming unpretentious scenes, whose very
charm partly resides in their limits. Although the
composition is reminiscent of the engraving Roi
citoyen avec toute sa famille à Neuilly (Citizen
King with his family in Neuilly), the children
depicted here cannot be Louis-Phillipe’s. On
the one hand, the number and order of the
children do not exactly correspond to those
of the duke d’Orléans family. On the other
hand, the painting was executed in the early
1820s, when the children of the duke should
have been ten years younger, whereas here
they are represented at the age they would
have reached in the 1830s. The traditional
identification may have been based on the fact
that the work was purchased by the Société
des Amis des Arts and won by the duke of
Orléans in Lille in 1822. Thus, such prestigious
provenance, as well as the similarity with the
print, may have led to the confusion.
In any case, the present painting is very
evocative of a simple and familial way of
living typical of the first third of the 19 th century:
it combines an aristocratic ease with a more
bourgeois attitude of dedication to the family
and of the importance of its bonds.