Jean-Baptiste AUGUSTIN (Saint Dié 15 August 1759-Paris... Lot 150

Jean-Baptiste AUGUSTIN (Saint Dié 15 August 1759-Paris 13 April 1832): "Portrait of a young woman in a white silk dress, her shoulders covered with a red shawl. In bust, almost from the front, she has curls that are raised and held in place by a pearl comb". Exceptional watercolor and gouache oval on ivory, signed and dated right: Augustin. 1805. In a chiselled gold "lamp-post" frame edged with white enamelled discs, the Marie-Louise in vermeil with an amati background. (a few tiny gaps in the enamel beads of the frame). Height. 6.3 cm. Length. 5.2 cm. Frame: Height 9.3 cm. Length 8.3 cm. Provenance: Sale Binoche and Giquello of 06/06/2012 n°50. With as Expert: Olivier BORÉ - PARIS. History: Resided in the family's descendants since 1805. Bibliography: Reproduced in the Exhibition Catalogue: "Jean-Baptiste AUGUSTIN, Peintre en miniature", Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, 17 April to 20 June 2010. Similar to the "Portrait of a woman in a white dress with a coral comb", Heidelberg Sale 2011. Catalogue raisonné par M. PAPPE Bernd, Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin, 1759-1832. A new excellence in the art of miniature portraiture, Verona, Scripta, 2015, reproduced as No. 560. Reference: Taking up a pose dear to the artist, Augustin painted this miniature in 1805. As if to accentuate the beauty of the model, sketching a slight smile, he places it in front of a brown-green smear background that brings out the clarity of the complexions and the intensity of the red shawl with a pearl comb as the only jewel. Thus, from this staging, simplified to the extreme, emanates a tranquillity where only beauty has its place, that beauty which Lassale, in his 1808 review, p. 408, described as "a portrait of perfection". In 1806, AUGUSTIN painted a critically acclaimed portrait of NAPOLEON and became the official painter of the Imperial Court. These portraits of the Emperor were used like those of ISABEY to decorate the boxes of present