Offered by Galerie de Frise
François-Joseph KINSON (Bruges 1770 - Bruges 1839)
Portrait of a young woman near a spring, accompanied by her dog
Oil on canvas
H. 73 cm ; L. 60 cm
around 1815-1817
This elegant portrait, which still belongs to the art of the First Empire, was painted by François-Joseph Kinson from Bruges. We find in this artist this type of pose, a little rigid, with sometimes a countryside in the background, and this way of treating the costumes and the faces. Thus, the full-length portrait of Jenny Cécile de Maillé, Marquise de Cubersac (Osenat, November 17, 2013; ill. 1), shows a similar way of installing her model near a tree and a mound of greenery, in front of a landscape. The same Italian straw hat as in our painting serves as an accessory to this portrait, and a similar one can also be seen on the portrait of Adèle Auguié, also by Kinson (ill. 2).
François-Joseph Kinson made his debut at a very young age in Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. He amassed a fortune which enabled him to come to Paris where he was naturalized French. Exhibiting his portraits at the Salon from 1799 onwards, he won a wealthy clientele and painted the effigies of the imperial family: Madame Mère, the Prince and Princess Borghese, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain. Appointed in 1809 as the first painter of Jerome Bonaparte, he followed him to the court of Westphalia and returned to Paris only after the fall of the Empire. He returned to Paris only after the fall of the Empire to work for the Duke of Angouleme, whose portrait he presented at the Salon of 1819. A sought-after painter under the Restoration, Kinson was able to continue a career filled with aristocratic commissions.
Our portrait offers a delicious testimony to a pivotal period in women's fashion. The dress is still in the ancient simplicity that prevailed under the Consulate and the Empire. But already some evolutions can be seen: the belt no longer passes under the chest, but descends towards the waist. Slightly shortened, the dress no longer dragged on the ground and was decorated with a braid. Balloon sleeves have appeared. The sobriety of this summer dress, of a virginal whiteness, is compensated by the brightness of the red cashmere shawl, whose vogue had been launched by Josephine. The whole indicates a "transitional style", allowing us to date our painting to the extreme end of the First Empire or rather to the first years of the Restoration.
Finally, a word about the symbolism of the painting - for it seems that there is one. The dog looking so tenderly at his mistress is a well-known emblem of fidelity. The garland of ivy around the straw hat could signify a faithful love, an eternal attachment: "The ivy dies where it attaches. Louise Cortambert, in his Language of flowers (1834), - romantic dictionary many times republished, which proposed a kind of floral Iconology -, recalls that in Greece, "the altar of the hymenée was surrounded by an ivy, and one presented a stem to the new spouses, like the symbol of an indissoluble bond". The volubilis growing in the rock seem to redouble these pledges of friendship and fidelity. The rural purity of the surrounding countryside, the immaculate white of the dress, reinforce the hypothesis that this portrait is that of a fiancée or a young and chaste wife.
We thank Mr. Norbert de Beaulieu for his help in the study of the costume and the dating of this painting.
