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Details
- Other Title
- Édouard Detaille dans son atelier
- Date
- 1891
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 100.1 x 77.7 cm stretcher; 126.7 x 104.4 x 6.5 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.r., black paint "... / B. LEMEUNIER. 1891".
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Stumm Bequest and the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales 2014
- Location
- Naala Nura, ground level, Grand Courts
- Accession number
- 139.2014
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Basile Lemeunier
Works in the collection
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About
Lemeunier was born in the small Normandy village of Antoigny, 40 km to the north east of Mayenne. As a young man he started by painting the walls of his parent’s house before supposedly moving on to paint ‘all the walls of the village’. He was soon taking commissions for portraits from clients in Mayenne. His talents were recognised by the local authorities who awarded him a two-year scholarlship to pursue his studies in Paris. He there entered the studio of Edouard Detaille while also attending classes given by the painter Amédée Hédin. By 1888 he was sending work to the Paris Salon and this he continued to do until the year before his death. His works received awards in 1891 and 1907, as also at the Expositions Universelles of 1889 and 1900. He became a close friend of Detaille and also worked as an assistant on that artist’s major project for the decoration of the Pantheon in Paris, squaring designs for transfer and collaborating on the execution of the decorative friezes. In his own work besides portraits, Lemeunier mostly painted scenes from contemporary life, including genre scenes and Paris street scenes.
Lemeunier’s portrait of Detaille shows him at work on the monster canvas of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ exhibited in 1891 at the Cercle de l’Union Artistique and acquired two years later by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Lemeunier’s portrait, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1891, is evidently based on an intimate knowledge of Detaille’s studio and working methods. The portrait provides an inventory of the props and materials employed in the elaboration of Detaille’s great canvas. These include numerous items of military apparel, as well as armour, helmets, a peaked hat, a horse’s bridle and caprison, a short-barrelled flintlock rifle, swords, banners, drums and bugles. These are interspersed with artist’s materials including a canvas seen from the rear with its colourman’s stamp, a palette knife, a pot of brushes, several paint tubes, bottles of oil, books, and portfolios of drawings. On the wall behind hangs a fragment of Detaille’s own painting of the ‘Distribution of Standards, 14 July 1880’, a work which owing to adverse criticism at the Salon of 1881 the artist cut in pieces, apparently retaining only this portion (currently at Versailles). Below this are four large frames each containing multiple monochrome images which might, intriguingly, be photographs. Dominating all these items is the enormous canvas only partially worked up, with areas of underdrawing and blocking in clearly discernable.
The disordered aspect of the studio may represent an element of artistic license on Lemeunier’s part. A description of the studio given by the novelist Miguel Zamacoïs corresponds with Lemeunier’s image in most but not all respects:
Edouard Detaille’s studio which I visited occasionally, was an exact reflection of the famous military painter’s appearance and way of life. Everything was clean, tidy polished ready for parade. The artist fully dressed, clean-shaven, not a hair out of place, would paint standing before an easel or perched on a step-ladder. … His palette (immaculate) would be in his hand – his studio was like a military museum. Rows of cardboard heads, which Detaille himself had painted, bearing wigs, carabineers’ helmets, shakoes, hats decorated with silk cords or feathers, of all kinds and of all countries, were ranged on shelves against one wall. Around and about were panoplies of sabres, swords, bayonets, lances and armour from all over Europe.
In an account of Lemeunier’s s career published in the Paris periodical ‘Gil Blas’ in 1895 this painting is cited, along with another portrait showing the painter Henri Cain in his studio, as one of the artist’s most remarkable works. The picture had been noted in the same journal on its appearance at the Salon as ‘fort gentil, le Detaille sur une grande échelle’ (very fine, the portrait of Detaille on a large ladder). It was also described in the journal ‘Le Rappel’ as ‘un portrait très étudié et très clair du peintre Edouard Detaille, campé debout sur les marches d’un escalier volant en train de peindre dans son atelier’ (‘a very meticulous and bright portrait of Detaille stood on the rungs of a step ladder engaged in painting in his studio’). Later that year the picture was also exhibited at Rouen, along with the portrait of Henri Cain (whereabouts unknown). Although the pictures were described as portraits, a journalist writing for the ‘Chronique des Arts’ echoed what may have been the response of many spectators in regarding them as primarily views of studio interiors in which the figures appear as accessories. The portrait of Detaille must be among the most evocative and informative of all painted images of a 19th-century artist’s studio.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
Salon de la Société des artistes français, Société des Artistes Français, , 1891–1891
XXXIIe exposition municipale des Beaux-Arts, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, , 1891–1891
Grand Courts collection rehang, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Nov 2021–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 16 publications
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Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of New South Wales annual report 2014–15, Sydney, 2015, pp 15, 53.
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Richard Beresford, Look, 'Perfection!', Sydney, Jun 2014, pp 10–11, col illus p 11.
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Paul Dupont, Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, exposés au Palais des Champs-Elysées le 1er mai 1891, Paris, 1891, p 88, no 1028.
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Charles Frémine, Le rappel, no 7721, 'Le Salon des Champs-Élysées', Paris, 01 May 1891, pp 1–2: 2.
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Grosclaude, Gil Blas, no 4184, 'Le Salon fantaisiste', Paris, 03 May 1891, p 2.
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Georges Lafenestre, Revue des deux mondes, 'Les Salons de 1891. I. La peinture au Salon des Champs-Élysées', Paris, 01 Jun 1891, pp 645–72: p 670.
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Julien Leclerf, Catalogue de la trente-deuxième exposition municipale de beaux-art ouverte au musée de Rouen le 1er octobre 1891, Rouen, 1891, p 68, no 513.
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Frédéric Masson, Édouard Detaille and his work with a special description of the picture “Vive l’Empereur!” charge du 4e hussards, London, 1891, illus frontispiece.
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André Michel, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, ‘Les Salons de 1891 - IV', Paris, 05 Jun 1891, p 2.
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Chiara O'Reilly, Journal of the history of collections, vol 32, no 2, 'Collecting French art in the late 1800s at the Art Gallery of New South Wales', Jul 2020, pp 313–25: p 322.
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Jules Richard and Frédéric Masson, En Campagne, tableaux et dessins de Alphonse de Neuville et Edouard Detaille, Paris, 1894, illus p1. 2nd series (Edouard Detaille).
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Marius Vachon, Detaille, Paris, 1898, illus opp p 4. Below image ‘à l’Atelier/ D’après le tableau de Lemeunier’.
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Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 'Tour du Salon. Champs-Élysées. La peinture', Paris, 30 Apr 1891, p 3.
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Gil Blas, no 5737, 'Echos. Les peintres: Basile Lemeunier’, Paris, 03 Aug 1895, p 1.
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Carnet de la Sabretache - Revue militaire rétrospective, no 240, Paris, Dec 1912, illus after p 712. ‘Edouard Detaille à l’atelier, d’après le tableau de Lemeunier’.
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La chronique des arts et de la curiosité, ‘XXXIIe Exposition Municipale de Rouen’, Paris, 31 Oct 1891, p 261.
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Provenance
The provenance of this work is under review and records will be updated as new details become available. The Gallery welcomes any information. Contact provenance@ag.nsw.gov.au
Edouard Detaille, circa 1891, France, Presumably given by the artist to Édouard Detaille.
Private Collection, pre 03 Nov 2013, France, Offered at auction Osenat, Fontainebleau, 24 March 2013, lot 187. Bought in. Sold at auction Osenat, Fontainebleau, 3 Nov 2013, lot 125, for 27,000 euros.
Galerie Talabardon et Gautier, post 03 Nov 2013-24 Jun 2014, Paris/France, Purchased by the AGNSW from Galerie Talabardon et Gautier.