Country Wedding On The Pond, Large Oil On Canvas By Henry Léon Jacquet

A very large rectangular oil on canvas.

This painting, signed Hy Jacquet lower left, depicts a rustic wedding scene on a river.

The foreground depicts a group of figures in a boat, beautifully adorned with red and white roses, floating on a pond.

In the center of the canvas, the bride stands gracefully, her head slightly bowed, her gloved hands delicately holding a small white and blue bouquet. A large transparent veil, attached to her hair by a floral tiara, elegantly covers her wedding dress.

The style is characteristic of Romantic painting, influenced by scenes of rural life that were very popular in the 19th century, but is closer to naturalist painting, which depicts nature as it is, without staging or exaggeration.

At this woman's side stands her future husband, who, far from being the main character in this depiction, is almost entirely hidden by the bride.

Behind them, the likely members of their family are gathered; a man wearing a cap and smoking a pike looks at two women, one wearing a graceful flowered straw hat and a green dress with a white collar, the other, older, wearing a white bonnet and a long red coat. Beside her, a little girl seems to be enjoying catching a flower, leaning with her hand outstretched towards the water.

Two men stand on either side of the boat, one standing at the stern, paddling, the other at the bow, next to a dog, playing the accordion.

The scene evokes an intimate and bucolic celebration, depicting a lakeside landscape whose background, defined by a perspective of the water, reveals mills on the right bank and probably houses on the left bank.

The brushstrokes are swift but masterful, as was characteristic of the art of the second half of the 19th century. The subject is indeed the bride, whose white dress stands out particularly from the other characters. She connects with the softness of the water, whose color, as bright as her dress, draws our gaze to the bottom of the painting, in a poetic visual reading. The scene is, however, realistic, gentle rather than festive, far from the rural style of the 18th century.

The large dimensions of this painting, the refined subject, and the elaborate frame that highlights it, make it one of the artist's finest works.

Henry Léon Jacquet (1856-1924) was a student of Cabanel, one of the most renowned painters of the 19th-century Romantic and Naturalist movement.

Director of the École des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing in 1883, Jacquet exhibited at the Salon from 1889.

Framed 19th-century work, signed lower left