French school of the XXth century after MEISSONIER - The confidence

French school of the XXth century
after Ernest MEISSONIER
Lyon, 1815 - Paris, 1891
Oil on wood panel
Signed lower left "M
44 cm x 34 cm (56 x 47 cm with the frame)
Ernest Meissonier was first successful in the 1840s and 1850s when he depicted on small wooden panels genre scenes of 18th century gentlemen in their daily occupations. Théophile Gautier compared him to the Flemish masters of the 17th century such as Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer of Delft. I
Ernest Meissonier's attention to detail is remarkable. And he was admired by the greatest artists of his time from Delacroix to Van Gogh and from Maupassant to Proust. Working in his studio, he dressed his models in period costumes and paid attention to the smallest detail. He knew as well how to translate the most delicate feelings.
A fashionable painter in the 1850's, Meissonier was chosen in 1855 by Napoleon with "The Rixe" purchased for 25,000 francs to give as a birthday present to Prince Albert of England, Queen Victoria's husband. The greatest collectors snatch it up (Lord Hertford and his son Richard Wallace, the Delesserts, the Rothschilds, the Péreires and Alfred Mosselmann).

Meissonier's fame has lasted until today and his works have been regularly copied.
This is a beautiful copy in the same dimensions of a painting dated 1857 and now exhibited in the museum of Compiègne. The painting represents an intimate scene where a man is reading a letter (perhaps a love letter) and confides it to his companion. As the art critic Henri Delaborde wrote "The eagerness of the first to express his joy or his hopes, the insinuating vivacity with which he specifies and brings out by the movement of his whole person the information that his lips transmit to his companion, while the latter coldly listens to this passionate confidence and calculates the consequences on his own, - all these subtle contrasts between what the two actors of the scene think or feel are analyzed and rendered with the insight of a moralist and the verve of a comic poet. "
As usual, the details described are numerous, here the earthenware with blue and white decoration, the plate of fruit, the carafes and the glass of wine placed on the table, the beautiful white tablecloth with its folds as well as the two tricorns hanging and the pouch placed on the ground.

Ref: FN3C811T0V