Théodore Jourdan (1833-1908) Peasant Woman With A Bag Of Grass.

A specialist in bucolic life in Provence in the 19th century and a worthy heir to the master Emile Loubon, Théodore Jourdan, keen to capture the attitude or movement, the true gesture of the peasant, the farmer's wife or the shepherd, used to make numerous studies of his characters or animals.
These same characters that we then find in the large compositions and large formats of which he had perfect mastery, thus delivering to us these beautiful testimonies that are the departures in transhumance or the various pastoral and rural scenes. The work presented here could be one of these studies, captured in the moment.
It represents a peasant woman walking on a path, a stick in her hand and a bag filled with grass on her shoulder. Certainly a harvest of grass to feed the farm animals.
The sensitive and charming work is made in oil on cardboard, it is presented in a simple frame that measures 46.5 cm by 38 cm and 36 cm by 27 cm for the cardboard panel alone.
In its good original condition, it is signed lower left.

A student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, Théodore Jourdan completed his studies in the studio of Émile Loubon in Paris.
He painted mainly sites of Provence and especially pastoral scenes where the representation of sheep of the local breed of Arles Merinos dominates.
He made his debut at the Marseille Exhibition of 1859 with A Visit to Nazareth.
He then exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1865.
He received a gold medal at the 1879 Universal Exhibition in Sydney.
He taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille from 1874 to 1903.
He bequeathed to his hometown, Salon-de-Provence, 19 large-format canvases as well as numerous drawings in exchange for a lifelong pension to be paid to his widow: these canvases are kept in a room that bears his name in the Salon and Crau Museum.

Works in public collections:

Aix-en-Provence, Granet Museum: A herd in Provence, 1880.
Marseille: Academy of Marseille: Portrait of Jean Roque.
Museum of Fine Arts: The Passage of the Herd Return of a Herd in Provence Herd of Goats Portrait of a Bearded Man Tourcoing, MUba Eugène Leroy: Sheep at the Watering Place, 1881
Salon-de-Provence, Salon and Crau Museum: Liner unloading its sheep in Marseille; Shepherd and his sheep in the Crau d'Arles; Flock in the Crau; The Goatherd and her donkey; Flock of sheep in the vanguard of the flock; Before dawn on the mountain; Shepherd and his flock under the mistral; Goats on the road to Cassis; The Pumpkin Harvest in Provence; Leaving the Sheepfold; Shepherdess and her flock at Lourmarin; Goatherd leading her flock; Shepherd and his flock in the storm; Shepherd in the pasture: Leaving the Sheepfold; Flock drinking from a stream in the undergrowth.