Célestin Nanteuil (1813-1873) - The Fall Of Royalty

Célestin Nanteuil (1813-1873)
The Fall Of Royalty
Black chalk drawing with gouache highlights on blue paper
32 x 23 cm
Signed lower right Slight orange oxidations of the gouache
Golden baguette from the 19th century (reported)
Provenance: - From a set of drawings and lithographs by Célestin Nanteuil presented by the Laura Pêcheur gallery in the early 2000s.

Born of French parents in the service of Joseph Bonaparte, brother of a Rome prize for sculpture, Célestin Nanteuil between age of fourteen at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He received first the teaching of Langlois, then that of Ingres. In the studio of the sculptor Jehan du Seigneur, he met Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, - whose close friend he became and one of the best illustrators -, as well as Théophile Gautier who saw in him "one of those long thuriferous angels who inhabit the gables of cathedrals”. A figure in romantic life, he took part in the battle of Hernani, fell desperately in love with Marie Dorval and designed the sets for the famous ball given by Alexandre Dumas in 1833. Engraver more than painter, using both etching and lithography, he is asked to illustrate a number of works and leaves a considerable engraved work. For editions such as Baron Taylor's Picturesque and Romantic Voyages in Old France, he composed page frames that resemble flamboyant Gothic tabernacles, encrusted with numerous vignettes of medieval scenes. "Using with a disconcerting mastery of a technique reputed to be difficult, writes Sylvain Boyer, he realizes, in these apparently modest works, one of the most accomplished plastic expressions of the romanticism of 1830. *" Nanteuil, however, will not arrive to adapt to the evolution of fashions and by need of money, he will accept to occupy the posts of director of the academy of the fine arts, then curator of the museum of Dijon. No engraving corresponding to our astonishing drawing is listed in the Nanteuil collection of the BNF. It is therefore difficult, in the current state of our knowledge, to attribute a precise meaning to it or to link it to a literary work. According to a mode of composition characteristic of the artist, several scenes skilfully fit together in the same image. On the upper part, lumberjacks in modern clothes are sawing off a segment of a tree trunk. Seated on the remains of the fallen tree, young people point to (or evoke among themselves) a king in medieval costume who proudly rides past. The lilies of his crown and his coat of arms designate him as a king of France. On the lower part, the same king has now fallen into a pit and his giant face, wedged between rocks, screams in despair. A few feudal symbols, dark fortress and scattered armor elements are suggested here and there. The fallen tree, cut by the loggers, seems a metaphor for the fall of the French monarchy and the feudal regime. Could the projected engraving have been designed during the 1848 revolution? In any case, it manifests an extraordinary expressive power which is largely due to the howling figure of the deposed king - which involuntarily resembles that of Goya's Saturn devouring his children.