ETIENNE AUBRY | The Offending Son (Le fils fautif)

Private Collection, France;
with P. & D. Colnaghi, London;
Nancy Cohn and Allan Katz,
their sale and others, New York, Christie's, 31 January 2013, lot 286

One of the most talented painters working in France in the latter half of the 18th Century, Etienne Aubry began his artistic training with Jacques Augustin de Silvestre, maître a dessiner des enfants de France, and later studied with Joseph Marie Vien. In the early years of his career, Aubry worked almost exclusively as a portrait painter, and as such was agréé at the Academie Royale in 1771. He made his debut at the Salon the same year, exhibiting four portraits. His work as a portraitist gradually gave way to an interest in genre painting in the moralizing manner of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, resulting in such works as Paternal Love in The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.¹

Comparable oil sketches by Aubry have appeared on the art market in Monaco in 1987² and in London in 1989.<sup>3

1.</sup> Birmingham, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, inv. no. 62.10
^2. Sale, Monte Carlo, Sotheby’s, 21 June 1987, lot 711
^3. London, Matthiesen Fine Art, A Selection of French Paintings 1700-1840 Offered for Sale, 1989, no.18