Théodore Gudin - Moonlight, Or The Rescue After The Storm - Oil On Canvas

“Theodore Gudin’s life is a real adventure. Famous during his lifetime, he was the first official painter of the Navy. Appointed in 1830, he subsequently fell into obscurity, before a taste for orientalism brought his work back to light. From America to the Middle East, via England, he had a life marked by several tragedies and traveled the whole world. “To paint the sea, you must have sailed,” he said.

This was the case very young, for this son of an Imperial general who died during the Battle of Valoutino, in 1812, since he left at the age of 17 for New York, where he joined the American navy and embarked on the brig Manchester. He then participated in fisheries surveillance missions in Newfoundland and witnessed his first shipwrecks, which remained real traumas, accentuated a few years later, after his return to France in 1822, by the disappearance of his older brother Louis, who sailed on the Seine. It was the latter, a student of Horace Vernet, who made him want to become a painter.

After passing through Girodet's workshop, Théodore Gudin began to paint and exhibit from 1824. Already protected by the Duke of Orléans, he was quickly noticed in the Salons by his marines and Charles , The Death of Ensign Bisson. Two years later, officially appointed painter of the Navy, he took part in an expedition to Algeria. It is a foretaste of the Orient that Gudin will deepen in the following years by making several trips to the Mediterranean basin, notably to Constantinople in 1839-1840. Made a baron by Louis-Philippe, whose goddaughter he married, he was charged by the sovereign with a large-scale commission: the creation of ninety paintings on French naval history, intended for the museum of Versailles. A just reward for this artist who knew better than anyone how to transcribe the multiple aspects of the sea, sometimes tumultuous, sometimes calm, but who also painted exotic landscapes with a poetic atmosphere. So many invitations to travel and daydream. »

Caroline Legrand, for La Gazette Drouot, November 20, 2019

Our painting represents a woman and her child, stranded on a rock after a shipwreck. The moonlight illuminates the foam of the waves which wash over the promontory. In a tragic and hopeful gesture the mother hands her child to the cloud of angels who have come miraculously to save them.

Provenance:
- Artcurial sale, February 12, 2019, lot 376 (€1500/2000)
- Parisian private collection