AUGUSTE BORGET (Issoudun, 1809 - Bourges, 187... Lot n° 36

MACAO GAME SCENES Pair of oak panels Gilded wooden frame 13 x 12 cm Ancient restorations Auguste BORGET - Travelling painter This native of Issoudun, trained in the workshop of the marine painter Théodore Gudin, and also a friend of Balzac, looks much further than Italy and chooses to make his "Grand Tour" around the vast world. It will be the Americas, the former Sandwich Islands, before a stay of more than a year in South China, between July 1838 and September 1839. Forced to leave the country when the first Opium War broke out, he nevertheless had time to fill his sketchbooks with drawings and to produce a few small, luminous and lively paintings, captured on the spot, as this pair of small paintings shows. On his return to France, Borget's sketches and drawings became illustrations for books and travel magazines. These two paintings were executed during the artist's stay in Macau, between November 1837 and June 1838. The painter from Issoudun had a fascination for the small trades of the Chinese but also for their addiction to gambling. Numerous illustrations of Chinese players can be found in the book La Chine et les Chinois (1842) with a preface by Honoré de Balzac. This very rare book is dedicated to Louis-Philippe. Both paintings are of high quality. We can see that there is some wear and tear probably related to a humid heat, a sign that they were painted in China and not on his return to Europe.