1070

Jean Joseph Vaudechamp (French, 1790-1866; Active New Orleans 1831-39), "Portrait of a Man and a Woman, Presumably Baroness Louise Deconchy Receiving Word of Her Husband's Death in Battle", oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left "Vaudechamp, 1823", 28-3/4" x 23", reverse label inscribed in pen and ink "Baronne Louise Deconchy, epouse du general d' Empire Vincent Martel Deconchy (1768-1823)". Presented in the period giltwood and gesso frame. This rare work is one of the earliest surviving paintings to have surfaced by Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, painted in France six years after he began exhibiting at the Paris Salon, one year before he married his second wife, one year before the death of his teacher, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and two years before his first (and only known) state commission. Vaudechamp very rarely painted multiple figures in the same composition, either in France or Louisiana. This canvas is presumably a portrait of Baroness Louise Deconchy, wife of General Vincent Martel Deconchy who died on a battlefield in Spain in 1823. This could perhaps be a mourning portrait of the Baroness and her son or secretary, with the classicized bust of the deceased general on a plinth behind the writing desk. The younger man is holding an official letter in his hand visibly inscribed at the top "MEE Espagne", again referring to the Franco-Spanish war. Regardless of the identity of the sitters, the portrait's composition is a sophisticated one for the 33-year-old artist, as the figures face each other tete-a-tete. Even in the handful of multi-figural compositions he would create in New Orleans, the painter usually preferred to have figures frontal, playing to the viewers. Vaudechamp's palette is brighter and slightly more acrid than the subdued one he would adopt in New Orleans after his 1832 arrival there. This work, like the Langres altarpiece and his later "Portrait of an Elegant Young Gentleman with Cane, presumed to be a Resident of New Orleans (Mr. Robley?)", reflects the artist's difficulty when presenting a figure at more than bust-length, witnessed in particular by the lady's lap and the extended leg. What he lacks in understanding of foreshortening, he more than makes up for in the handling of the face, fabric and details, seen in the design on the shawl draped over the chair. New Orleans Auction Galleries would like to thank William Keyse Rudolph, Ph.D., The Dudley J. Godfrey, Jr. Curator of American Art and Decorative Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum for his generous contribution to cataloguing this lot.


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December 7, 2013 10:00 AM CST
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