François Simon (1818-1896) The Donkey And The Goat

There is always a great deal of emotion and tenderness in the animal portraits of the painter François Simon.
A sensitive and bucolic artist, he has no equal in depicting farm animals on small canvases, bringing together donkeys, goats, and sheep with generous impasto, and as is the case here, playing with the bare wood panel, which becomes one of the three colors of the reclining goat's coat.
The work is presented in a lovely carved, gilt frame measuring 25 cm by 34 cm, and 14.5 cm by 23.5 cm for the panel alone.
In good condition, the work is signed in the lower right corner.

The son of a wigmaker, he worked from a very young age with his father as a hairdresser and wigmaker.
A modest and sincere artist, after studying under Aubert at the free drawing school in Marseille, he asked Loubon to further his studies there.
"Painting is my only happiness," he wrote naively in his petition.
François Simon was 35 years old when, at a salon exhibition in Lyon, his talent was appreciated by a wealthy collector who helped and encouraged him until the end of his life.
The animals he depicted—sheep, goats, donkeys, and cows—are small portraits painted with genuine tenderness.
But he did not inherit Loubon's taste for movement and action.
His stable interiors, rendered with skillfully studied lighting, remain his finest paintings.

Works in Public Collections:

The Marseille Museum of Fine Arts, in the Palais Longchamps, holds several of his works: "Two Goats in the Stable, on the Way to the Slaughterhouse" (1859), "Sheep in the Pastures" (1864), "Rams and Ewes in the Valley of the Lime Kilns" (1878), as well as charcoal portraits.
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Pont de Bachas,
At the Museum of Old Marseille,
in Pontoise, (sheep, undergrowth),
in Saint-Étienne, (Waiting for night on the hill of La Mure, Sheep in the pasture; Sheep; Portrait)
in Strasbourg (goat and donkey in a stable).