Charles Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900) - Children's Games, circa 1890

Charles Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900)
Children's Games, circa 1890
Pastel
26 x 35.5 cm
46.5 x 54.5 cm with frame
Signed lower right

Charles-Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900) was a French painter renowned for his Impressionist-style drawings, pastels and lithographs depicting the world of childhood.

The son of a notary from Aubenas, Charles was the second of eleven siblings. The first, Philippe, was a journalist with L'Univers and died in Versailles in October 1890. The third, Paul (1827-1898), was a mathematician.
Charles was a pupil of Hippolyte Flandrin, Louis Lamothe and Pierre-Charles Comte. In 1861, he exhibited two painted portraits of young girls signed "C. Serret". In 1863, he was included in the Salon des refusés. Regularly exhibiting paintings of childhood genre scenes, he changed medium in 1882, presenting a suite of lithographs at the Salon des Artistes Français; perhaps this was a project for an album, Petites Filles et bébés de France. The following year, he exhibited a series of pastels, a technique he would develop until 1892, the date of his last Salon, this time with the Société nationale des beaux-arts. In 1888, he exhibited with Durand-Ruel, acclaimed by Hugues Le Roux, and enjoyed his first real success. The 1889 Salon awarded him a medal and he became a member of the Société des peintres-graveurs français.
For Serret, the 1890s seemed to be the decade of recognition. The art dealer Ambroise Vollard took him into his gallery. The critic Étienne Moreau-Nélaton collected him, and he was admired by Léon Roger-Milès, Octave Mirbeau and Arsène Alexandre.

He died in January 1900 in a retirement home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and in 1907 was posthumously included in the Moreau-Nélaton collection exhibited at the Musée du Louvre when Moreau-Nélaton made a donation to the institution. In 1913, his children's pastels were among the French drawings exhibited at the Armory Show.

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