École française d’époque Second Empire, d’après... Lot n° 21

Portraits of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. Pair of oil on canvas, fixed under a curved glass; oval format. Circa 1855-1860. In a pair of oval frames carved with roses and gilded. H. 53 x W. 44 cm. History This exceptional pair of full-length portraits representing the Emperor and Empress of the French, in full court attire, was made after the famous official portraits painted in 1853 by Winterhalter, then painter of the European Courts and favorite of the imperial couple. There are some variations from the official portraits, however, in the bicorn held by the Emperor in his right hand (he holds the scepter and wears the ermine coat on the original), or in the red velvet train worn by the Empress (it is green on the original portrait). Also striking is the neutral background that was chosen for these two portraits, in the manner of the first photographic portraits of the time, thus highlighting the elegant silhouettes of the characters and the richness of their clothing. The technique used here is the fixed under glass, or elusive painting, invented at the end of the 18th century, which makes our portraits exceptional works. Developed by Arnauld Vincent, known as Armand-Vincent de Montpetit (1713-1800), a clockmaker and physicist and inventor of several ingenious machines and processes, this process was devised in 1759 to obtain a new way of painting miniatures, using only oil and water. The paints are fixed on a glaze that acts as a varnish and gives a great intensity of color on a perfectly shiny surface. Described in the Dictionnaire raisonné universel des arts et métiers by Abbé Jaubert (1773), this process was presented to the Académie royale des Sciences in 1775. Approved by the learned academicians, Vincent's discovery was favored by the Court and by King Louis XV who commissioned his portrait painted according to this new technique (Château de Versailles, inv. MV 8452) as well as several miniatures. An exceptional technique for conservation This process was intended to solve the problems posed by the deterioration of paintings over time, but the fragility of glass combined with the problems of glue limited this process to small paintings or miniatures. Elusive painting was frequent during the first half of the 19th century on miniatures intended to decorate boxes or small objects. Under the Second Empire, the glass industry having been perfected, elusive painting is again honored in the decorative arts, it was then proposed as an alternative to porcelain or enamel, for the execution or reproduction of works of large format. The quality of the colors which is not altered either in time or in its implementation (contrary to porcelain or enamel, where the pigments are transformed in the fire), and the porcelain rendering which emphasizes the represented subject, are particularly remarkable for the conservation of your paintings; but this technique remains difficult and very delicate in particular at the time of the pose of glass on the canvas under tension. This process of fixing under glass which promised brilliant jobs in the field of arts, will be then quickly supplanted in the inventory of the fine arts by photography. Probably created for a Salon or a World's Fair, our pair of portraits representing the imperial couple is remarkable for its size, its quality of conservation, the fineness of its colors, as well as the rarity of its process.