Charles Monginot - Oriental Still Life

Charles MONGINOT (Brienne-le-Château, 1825 - Dienville, 1900) Oriental Still Life Oil on canvas mounted on a wood panel 73 x 56 cm (92 x 71 cm with frame) Signed lower left "CH. M" Good condition Beautiful late 20th-century giltwood frame Charles Monginot was a French painter from the Briennois region, in the northeast of the Aube department in Champagne. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1850s in the studio of Thomas Couture, and then made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1859 (medals in 1864 and 1899). He painted mainly portraits and still lifes, as well as some genre scenes. Charles Monginot was among the highly decorative painters who were appreciated at the court of Napoleon III. He was a friend of Édouard Manet (he appears in the painting "Music in the Tuileries Gardens," painted by Manet in 1862 alongside the artists Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Baron Taylor, and the painters Zacharie Astruc, Albert de Balleroy, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Alfred Stevens). Charles Monginot's paintings are held in numerous museums in France (notably the Petit Palais in Paris, and museums in Carcassonne, Chartres, Metz, Mulhouse, Narbonne, and Nice). Our painting depicts an interior filled with various accessories in an oriental style: rugs, fabrics, a lamp, a bowl, and so on. A very warm atmosphere emanates from it, thanks to the beautiful warm colors and the abundance of objects (the rich fabrics, the elegant lamp, the books, the ceramic bowl) arranged in a close-knit frame. Perhaps it represents a corner of an artist's studio (the accumulation of objects, the painting hanging on the wall behind).