XIII - Paintings and Drawings - Marty de Cambiaire

Jean-Jaqcues Monantreuil, who is little known today as a
small number of works had been given to him, was granted
an exhibition in the Musée des Beaux-arts et de la dentelle,
Alençon, and in the Musée de Tessé, Mans, in 1997-1998 1 .
The first attempt at a biographical study and a catalogue of
his drawings and prints was made by Léon de la Sicotière,
who dedicated his work to marquis de Chennevière, “a
delicate and secure judge who highly appreciated the
talent of our old Monantreuil” 2 . The author announced
that he had used an article of Charles Bar and the notice
of Charles Gabet in his Dictionnaire des artistes de l’école
française 3 . He richly furnished his study with anecdotes and
first-person accounts as he had had been rather close to
the artist. Although some statements must be taken with a
certain distance and a little humour 4 , this first study remains
essential for the information that we possess about the artist
and is a useful source of a fair number of biographical facts.
Son of a wool merchant from the province of Perche,
Monantreuil showed a strong inclination for drawing from
a very young age. He was noticed and encouraged by some
local amateurs who helped him enter the Ecole Centrale de
l’Orne, where he studied under the still life painter Fraisnais
d’Albert. Around 1800, the most powerful of his patrons
Joseph Poissonier de Prûlai placed him as an apprentice
with Girodet where he rubbed shoulders with Alexandre
Colin, Deveria, Lancrenon, Gudin etc. Docile and full of
admiration for his master, Monantreuil became one of his
favourite pupils and stayed in his atelier until the end. He
participated in the execution of Girodet’s most important
paintings and in the decorative works of the Château of
Compiègne 5 . According to the legend, he posed for the
figure of Chactas in the famous painting The Entombment
of Atala. Correspondence and other written sources prove
that he also enjoyed good relations with Guérin, Gros and
Gérard.
After Girodet’s death, Monantreuil undertook a journey first
to the west and then to the north of France. He returned
to Paris with numerous paintings representing Dieppe and
fishing scenes which he exhibited at the Gallery Lebrun.
After Normandy he explored Brittany and continued to
paint in genre pittoresque, then much in fashion, executing
portraits of children and old men “of Breton type, some
handsome as antique figures, others potent and strange as
can be found in a Rembrandt or a Callot” 6 . In 1833, he was
appointed professor of drawing at the college in Alençon.
He held this position for two years, then quit to be able
to paint again, but was forced to return in 1843 driven by
material needs. Throughout all these years, Monantreuil
continued to paint and exhibit his works in Paris and in
Caen, Douai, Alençon, Lisieux etc.
In 1827, Monantreuil exhibited at the Salon with Head of
a Turk, study after nature (No. 1700). Léon de la Sicotière
also listed his Head of a Turk in profile of 1828 and,
providing no other detail, three studies of heads of a Turk
and Greeks. The present Head of a Young Greek dating
1830, may belong to this group. Chennevières wrote a
letter to the artist regarding it on 31 July 1860: “…excellent
paintings, with a very wide and fresh brushwork, freely
rubbed, unhesitatingly touched.” Two of these Orientalist
studies are in the museum of Alençon. In them Monantreil
repeats the practice that Girodet adopted between 1804
and 1819 fully exploiting its expressive and decorative
potential. The end of the Greek War of Independence in
1829 as well as the emergence of an authentic Orientalism
around 1830 may have renewed the painter’s interest to
this type of subject. The heads in the museum of Alençon
were painted on a grey background. The present head,
painted on a black background, is reminiscent of a Head
of a Turk by Claude-Marie Dubufe, signed but not dated,
which has recently appeared on sale. The same format, the
same haughty expression, almost with a slightly disdainful
grimace, same black background.
Dubufe’s portrait is likely to be that of Hassan El Berberi,
Mehmet Ali’s Egyptian emissary who accompanied the
giraffe presented by Ali to Charles X in 1826 7 . In Paris, the
young Egyptian man supposedly posed for Léon Cogniet,
Léon Riesener and even Delacroix, all of whom, just
like Girodet, had portrayed several Mamelukes who had
taken refuge in Paris in the 1810s. The sitter in the present
painting has a paler skin, albeit the similarity of expression
is striking. Monanteuil is most likely to have seen Dubufe’s
portrait and took inspiration from it.
Expressive finesse, the beauty of costumes and mastery of
colours which Monantreuil demonstrates in his Orientalist
studies reveal the talent of this little-known artist.
1 Jean-Pierre Bouvier, Aude Pessey-Lux & Michèle
Nitikine, Jean-Jacques Monanteuil, 1997, Alençon,
Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle, 1997-1998, Le
Mans, Musée de Tessé, exhibition catalogue.
2 Léon de La Sicotière, Monanteuil, dessinateur et
peintre, Le Blanc-Hardel, Caen, 1865, 34 p. in-8°.
3 Charles de Bar, L’Union de la Sarthe, June 14th and July
19th 1860; Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de
l’École française au XIX e siècle, 1831, p. 495.
4 Léon de La Sicotière reported, for example, an atelier
legend supposedly confirmed by the artist, according
to which the Louvre version of The Entombment of
Atala has in fact been painted by Monantreuil before
his master who then retouched and signed it, while
the original was given another destination (p.8).
Although, from the correspondence between Count
Pradel and Count de Forbin, the work is known to have
been purchased in 1819 from a Mr. Guérin, who had
supposedly commissioned it in 1808, according to
Charles Blanc.
5 This information was first provided by Charles de Bar,
July 19th 1860.
6 Léon de La Sicotière, op. cit., p. 19.
7 See the article of Côme Fabre, “Un Égyptien à Paris”,
Grande Galerie - Le Journal du Louvre, December 2017/
Jan.-Feb. 2018, No. 42, p. 20. It should be noted that
Dubufe himself made the lithograph after the portrait
under the title Jeune Grec, which shows the importance
of philhellene vogue.
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