Jean-François GARNERAY (Paris 1755 - Auteuil ... Lot n° 28

Jean-François GARNERAY (Paris 1755 Auteuil 1837). Portrait of Bernard Germain Étienne de Laville-sur-Illon, Count of Lacépède (1756-1825). Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard. 55×43 cm. Ancient restorations. Jean-François Garneray was one of David's first pupils, as he returned to study in his studio in 1782. He was employed as a draughtsman at the Royal Academy of Music. During the Revolution, he already exhibited portraits in his first salons, in 1791 and 1793, had effigies of politicians engraved and called himself a "painter in miniature". During the Restoration, he painted a few landscapes (Place de l'Étape in Orléans, 1819, Musée d'Orléans), genre scenes and subjects of troubadour taste. His "Molière honored by Louis XIV" has just been bought in November 2020 by the Comédie Française museum in Paris. Like almost all artists at that time, Garneray belonged to the Freemasonry and more than others, he was involved in the order. Several of his portraits of brothers are kept at the Museum of Freemasonry in Paris or at the Masonic Museum of the Grand Lodge of France in Puteaux. His four children became painters or draughtsmen: Auguste, Hippolyte, Pauline, the best known being Louis (1783-1857), specialized in marines and the representation of boats. Our painting combines her two talents as a portraitist and interior painter. Based on a model defined by David (Portrait of Lavoisier and his wife, 1788), Danloux (Portrait of Baron de Bezenval, London, National Gallery, 1794) or a little later Baron Gérard (Portrait of Louis XVIII, 1824), Garneray shows Lacépède sitting at his desk in his study, dressed in a woollen dressing gown and in front of a fireplace. Each element is chosen according to the model's career or social position: he appears both as a modern man of his time and as a scholar, heir to the spirit of the Enlightenment. On the wall, the portrait of the naturalist Buffon, his mentor, hangs on the mantelpiece, probably his wife's; on the table, a volume of his famous collection of Ichtyology, the Natural History of Fish, published between 1798 and 1803. The model. Bernard-Germain-Etienne de la Ville-sur-Illon, Count of Lacépède, born December 26, 1756 in Agen and died October 6, 1825 in Epinay-sur-Seine, is a French naturalist and politician, senator, peer of France and then Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor from 1803 to 1814. From an early age, he was interested in natural history and music, two passions passed down to him by his father (Jean Joseph Médard de la Ville-sur-Illon). He set to music his first opera at the age of fifteen, the Armide by the poet Quinault, thus becoming the protégé of the musician Glück. His political vocation was born the following year, when he was received in 1777 at the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, of which he was one of the dignitaries and most assiduous members (Voltaire was there between April 4, 1778 and Benjamin Franklin became its venerable master on November 28, 1778). From 1781 onwards, he published numerous scientific works and composed other operas. Thanks to Buffon, he obtained the position of "guard and sub-demonstrator of the natural history collections of the King's garden" on January 1, 1785. Welcoming the Revolution with enthusiasm, he was a member of the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and served as Speaker from November 28 to December 9. But fearing for his life under the Terror, he left Paris for Leuville in Seine-et-Oise and did not return to Paris until after the fall of Robespierre. After 18 brumaire, he supported Bonaparte and was a member of the Conservative Senate from its creation (24 December 1799). He taught at the Museum until 1803 and in the same year was appointed Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour by the First Consul, who affirmed that the Legion was not an exclusively military institution, but also a civilian one. It is to Lacépède that we owe the acquisition, on 3 May 1804, of the Hôtel de Salm, which still houses the Grand Chancellery. He would not resign himself to leaving his accommodation on the Quai Voltaire for the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur until 2 November 1811. In February 1805, he was decorated with the Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour, a distinction traditionally reserved for high-ranking officers, and in 1807 Napoleon appointed him President of the Senate, a position that he alone held without interruption from 1811 to 1814. On 13 March 1815, the Emperor made him "irremovable Grand Chancellor". On March 6, 1819, he was one of the sixty new peers appointed and died on October 6, 1825, honoured by the scientific world and all the notables. Finally, let us mention other portraits of Lapécède, as a bust, by Paulin-Guérin after Louis Hersent at the Château de Versailles, or younger by Joseph Ducreux, around 1785, at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. Another portrait was made posthumously.