Charles Doussault - A Lady Playing With A Parrot

Charles DOUSSAULT 1814 - 1880 Oil on canvas 32.5 cm x 24.5 cm (52 x 41 cm with the frame) Signed and dated lower left "Ch. Doussault / 1836" Very beautiful period frame in gilded wood Charles Doussault was an orientalist painter-traveler who produced a portrait of Sultan Abdulmecid in 1846 and numerous paintings and drawings from Romania, Syria and the Holy Land. He was a pupil of Ingres and Eugène Devéria before becoming the collaborator of the Devéria brothers. He then exhibited at the Paris Salon mainly in the 1830s to 1850s, first troubadour subjects before leaving to travel first to Romania and then to the Middle East in 1844, to Turkey, Damascus and to the Holy Land from where he brought back subjects for oils and watercolors which made him famous in Paris in the 1840s and 1850s. Our painting dates from his first period, precisely 1836. It was painted when Charles Doussault was still young and working as a collaborator of the Devéria brothers . This may be a portrait of an actress in costume in a play like many Achille Devéria (Marie Dorval, Elisa Rachel, Fanny Elssler...). Or perhaps it is a genre scene inspired by the adventures of the parrot Vert-Vert, taken from the humorous poem of the same name composed by Jean-Baptiste Gresset and published in 1734, and which greatly inspired troubadour painters in the first third of the 19th century (Fleury Richard, Jacquand, Granet among others).