Jérôme Preudhomme (attributed To) - The Love Seller

Jérôme PREUDHOMME (Attributed to) Arras, v1735 - Paris, 1810 Oil on canvas 47 x 58 cm (67 x 78 cm with the frame) Very beautiful frame in carved and gilded wood of the 19th century La Marchande d'Amours is a fresco by the Arianna villa from the 1st century AD and discovered in 1759 during archaeological excavations of the ancient city of Stabies, now Castellammare di Stabia. The scene describes a merchant, a toilet seller (who went to houses to offer clothes, jewelry, fabrics) who offers little loves here! These are locked in a small cage. Women come to buy them. The theme of the love merchant was treated by Jean-Marie Vien for the first time in 1761 and was very successful at the Salon of 1763. The painter no longer attaches himself to the gods or heroes of mythology but to graceful images in vogue at the time. Vien thus launched the so-called "Greek" fashion. We know a number of artists who made compositions on the theme: Jacques-Louis David, pupil of Vien, Jacques Gamelin and Johann Heinrich Füssli in painting; Bertel Thorvaldsen, Adamo Tadolini and Christian Gottfried Jüchtzeren in sculpture. Our painting is attributed to Jérôme Preudhomme. The range of very clear colors where we always recognize the same yellow, pink, blue and green is characteristic in his paintings. Just like the little round heads of his characters and the taste for small Nordic details. Painter of history, Preudhomme was also a painter of genre and landscapes. Originally from Arras, Jérôme Preudhomme arrived in Paris in 1761. He was received in 1773 as a “master painter by experience” at the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris and exhibited there in 1774. Appointed professor in Paris, he was then appointed in 1784 professor of the Saint-Quentin drawing school founded in 1782 by Maurice Quentin-Latour.