安托萬‧讓‧格羅男爵

R. Andrée, Katalog der Gemälde des 19 Jahrhunderts im Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne 1964, p. 46 under cat. no. 2682.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work seems to be unlined. The paint layer is still in beautiful and undamaged condition, showing only very faint cracking. It has been carefully cleaned to retain all of its patina, and the condition is marvelous throughout the work. There are a couple of retouches in the child's dark clothing beneath the yellow scarf and three or four random spots along the top edge, but there do not appear to be any retouches throughout the remainder of the picture.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

We are grateful to Gérard Auguier for confirming this portrait to be by Antoine-Jean Gros, based on firsthand inspection.  Though he knows of no other instance of Gros painting a repetition, he believes this work to be an autograph second version of the portrait of Françoise Simonnier and her Daughter which is now in the collection of the Wallraf-Richarz Museum, Cologne (WRM2682).

Françoise Simonnier was a laundress and the mistress of Gros, with whom she had a daughter in 1827.  Gros depicts her as a radiant young woman holding their child on her lap; the girl pulls gently at the bodice of her mother’s dress revealing her breast.  Both sitters engage the viewer directly, drawing them into this intimate moment.  Gros, who had been in a long and unhappy marriage, arranged for Françoise to live in Brussels where he set her up with a regular income and legally adopted their child, Françoise-Cécile, in 1830.  In a letter written in October 1829 to his friend, the artist Joseph-Denis Odevaere, Gros described  Françoise as unschooled but “active, adroite, d’un probité à toute épreuve, généreuse jusqu’à l’imprudence envers les malades ou les malheureux, trop confiante envers les emprunteurs (energetic, adroit, possessing unshakable integrity, generous  to the point of imprudence with the sick and unfortunate, and too trusting with borrowers.").¹  In another letter to Odevaere, dated 12 November 1829, Gros worried that she might sell a painting that he was sending to her.²  The painting he refers to is probably identifiable with the portrait now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and which descended in the family of Gros’s daughter.³  It is tempting to speculate that the reason Gros painted two versions, a unique occurrence in the artist’s oeuvre, was in order to send one to Françoise in Brussels and, perhaps, keep another for himself.  Gros’s wife eventually agreed to accept the child into their home in Paris.  This arrangement, however, did not last long due to her jealousy of the girl and Gros arranged for his daughter to live at a pension where he would secretly visit her.⁴  Françoise died in 1835 and Gros, who had been suffering from depression, due not only to his troubled domestic life but, perhaps, even more so to the perceived failure of his career, drowned himself in the Seine later that same year.  Françoise-Cécile eventually married the Marquis Léon de Lestang-Parade (1812-1887), a history and portrait painter.

 

 

1  See D. O’Brien, After the Revolution, Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda Under Napoleon, University Park, MD 2006, p. 192 and p. 265, note 6 (unpublished letter in the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, acc. no. 8504444).
2  Ibid., p. 192 and p. 265, note 7 (unpublished letter in the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, acc. no. 8504444).
3. Information provided by Gérard Auguier.
4.  J. Tripier le Franc, Histoire de la vie and de la mort du Baron Gros, Paris 1880, pp. 434-435.