Lot n° 123
Estimation :
50000 - 60000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 63 500EUR
Pierre-Paul PRUD'HON (1758-1823) - Lot 123
Pierre-Paul PRUD'HON (1758-1823)
Pierre-Paul PRUD'HON (1758-1823)
Portrait of Marguerite Duffour, wife of the sculptor Nicolas Bornier
around 1796
Oil on canvas (lining)
40 x 32 cm; 16 ½ in. x 12 ½ in.
Provenance:
- François Marcille (1790-1856), Paris,
- Camille Marcille (1816-1875), Paris, son of the former
- Its first sale, Drouot, Me Pillet, 6-7 May 1876, lot 56 (sold 4.100 francs).
- Madame Charles Kestner, née Marguerite Antoinette Eugénie Rigau (1806-1890), Paris, acquired at the Marcille sale,
- Doctor James Hasson, London, acquired at an auction in the 1950s,
- Then, by descent, until today.
Bibliography:
- Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint dessiné et gravé de P.P.Prud'hon, Paris, 1876, pp.26-27, 322.
- Guiffrey, L'œuvre de Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Paris, 1924, p. 176 (n°469).
Exhibition:
- Exposition départementale de Chartres, 1869, n°29.
- Exhibition of Prud'hon's works for the benefit of his daughter, Paris, ENSBA, 1874, n°6.
Related works:
- Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823), Portrait of Nicolas Bornier, Rome, 1788, oil on canvas, 42 x 34 cm. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. CA431. Counterpart of our painting.
"How could the Louvre let the portrait of Madame Bornier be sold this spring for four thousand one hundred francs (4,100 fr.!)? It was not in an obscure or shady sale, but in the Marcille sale. All the high and fine Parisian public had, during the days of the private or public exhibition, affirmed their admiration for this head which radiates life, youth and mischief, for this luminous and supple canvas like a good Rembrandt, intact and under its first varnish. Fortunately, this portrait remains in France, Mme Kestner having taken it in and not being of a heart or family to ever let it leave."
Ph. Burty, " L'art de P.P.Prud'hon ", in L'Art, Revue Hebdomadaire Illustrée, Paris, Ballue, 1877, T.1, pp. 33-36.
"Monsieur Marcille père, writes Edmond de Goncourt, had had the good fortune to buy it for a sum of 300 francs and a copy made by Chacorne [in fact, Chocarne ]. The wife of Prud'hon's friend, Nicolas Bornier, professor of sculpture at the school of Dijon, is represented in bust, seen from the front. Her face is framed by her hair cut Breton style on the front, and over the lace border of a bonnet, she is wearing a small round brown fur hat. A wide, lying kerchief crosses over her neck and covers her chest. And he adds: "Charming and strange portrait made with this caressed make, this transparent dry paste that Prud'hon used for a time, and which gives his portraits executed in this way a very particular originality".
Unpublished, our portrait of Madame Bornier had disappeared from the eyes of the French public since 1876.
Nicolas Bornier (1762-1829) was, in 1787, the last of the seven artists to win the Prix de Rome of the States of Burgundy, independent of the Royal Academy, along with the painters Gagneraux, Naigeon, Prud'hon, and the sculptors Renaud, Bertrand and Petitot. All of them were students of the School of Drawing in Dijon, directed by François Desvoge, whose patriarchal figure was for them the object of an almost filial veneration.
At the beginning of his stay in Rome, from the end of 1787 to 1791, he met Prud'hon again, who may have painted his portrait (Dijon Museum), and returned to France in April 1788.
Until today, we only know the model as Madame Bornier in the bibliography. Research at the Côte d'Or registry office and the identification of the birth certificate of the couple's first daughter allow us to know more. Indeed, "the Second Year, twenty-one ventôse" (March 11, 1794), "Marguerite Duffourt", residing "Rue Maison Rouge, Section Crébillon", gave birth to Marie. Her husband affixes his beautiful signature, in company of Bénigne-Claude Gagneraux (younger brother of Bénigne and painter like him) and his wife, both godfather and godmother of the child.
The date of his portrait is not documented. Prud'hon is not known to have come to Dijon at the time of the wedding (1793), but he visited it during his stay in Franche-Comté (1795-1796).
The portrait of Nicolas Bornier, which remained with his children, was acquired there by Charles-Balthazar Févret de Saint-Mémin, the first curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, to whom he presented it in 1847.
We would like to thank Mr. Sylvain Laveissière, Honorary General Curator of the Department of Paintings at the Louvre Museum, for the assistance he kindly gave us in studying this portrait, which he will include in the catalogue raisonné of Prud'hon's work, currently in preparation.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue