French School Of The 20th Century After Ernest Meissonier - La Confidence

20th century school after Ernest MEISSONIER Lyon, 1815 – Paris, 1891 Oil on wood panel Signed lower left “M” 44 cm x 34 cm (56 x 47 cm with the frame) Ernest Meissonier first known as success in the 1840s/1850s by depicting genre scenes on small wooden panels featuring 18th century gentlemen in their daily occupations. Théophile Gautier then compares him to the Flemish masters of the 17th century such as Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer de Delft. I Ernest Meissonier's attention to detail is remarkable. And he is admired by the greatest artists of his time from Delacroix to Van Gogh and from Maupassant to Proust. Working in the studio, he dressed his models in period costumes and cared about the smallest detail. He also knew how to translate the most delicate feelings. A fashionable painter in the 1850s, Meissonier was chosen in 1855 by Napoleon with "la Rixe" bought for 25,000 francs to offer as a birthday present to Prince Albert of England, Queen Victoria's husband. The greatest collectors snap it up (Lord Hertford and his son Richard Wallace, the Delesserts, the Rothschilds, the Péreires and even Alfred Mosselmann). Meissonier's notoriety has lasted until today and his works have been regularly copied. This is a beautiful copy in the same dimensions of a painting dated 1857 and now on display at the Compiègne museum. The painting represents an intimate scene where a man reads a letter (perhaps of love) and confides it to his companion. As the art critic Henri Delaborde wrote, "The eagerness of the first to pour out his joy or his hopes, the insinuating vivacity with which he clarifies and brings out through the movement of his whole person the information that his lips transmit to his companion, while the latter listens coldly to this impassioned confidence and calculates the consequences on his own - all these subtle contrasts between what the two actors in the scene think or feel are analyzed and rendered with the perspicacity of a moralist and the verve of a comic poet. As usual, the details described are numerous, here the earthenware with blue and white decoration, the plate of fruit, the carafes and the glass of wine placed on the table, the beautiful white tablecloth with its folds as well as the two three-cornered hats suspended and the pocket placed on the ground.