Germain Paget (1817–1884) - Portrait of ayoung girl

Germain PAGET
(Morbier, 1817 – Morbier, 1884)

Portrait of a girl

Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
65 x 54cm

Germain Paget was born in Morbier on May 18, 1817, second in a family of seven children. His father, Pierre Claude, ran a sawmill at the Paget mill and a watchmaking workshop in the village where he developed stamping for crowns and pendulums.
Germain entered the royal college of Dole. He also took courses at the municipal drawing school, directed by Jean Séraphin Désiré Besson (1795-1864). Besson, trained in Paris by Dejoux and Pradier, was an excellent master, teaching industrial and artistic drawing, modeling, decorative and landscape painting.
Germain Paget, recommended by Besson, left for Paris in 1839 to continue his training at the School of Fine Arts and at the workshop of the painter Adolphe Brune (originally from Souvans, near Dole) who received all the students sent by Besson. Artistic training, as it was imposed by David, was essentially based on the mastery of drawing: anatomy drawing, drawing from antiquity, perspective study.
Germain Paget was then a student in Paris. He attended the workshops of two Francs-Comtois, Adolphe Brune and Jean Gigoux, then Thomas Couture.
He lives at 41, rue Monsieur-le-Prince, creates portraits for members of his family, but also for his Jura relations, in order to meet the numerous costs that his training requires. The student must pay the “boss” of the workshop, who comes twice a week to correct the work, he buys his supplies and also pays the models who come to pose.
Honoré Chapuis, born in Arlay the same year as him, was a faithful friend for Germain who followed the same artistic path to become a drawing teacher at the Besançon School of Fine Arts in 1851.
Germain Paget prepared the entrance exam to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris around 1838. The competition tests included the execution of an anatomy drawing and a perspective sketch. If these two elimination tests were successful, the candidate then produced a drawing from nature or from the antique. The training was based on a good mastery of drawing and composition, color being a secondary element among the criteria retained by the Academy.

The Salon, which was held each year at the Louvre (then at the Tuileries, finally at the Grand Palais), was the great affair of artists, whose paintings admitted by the jury were extensively commented on in the Parisian and regional press. Encouraged by his master, Auguste Brune, Germain Paget participated regularly from 1841 with religious works, such as a Saint Paul (work not located).
By presenting in 1844 Saint Francis Xavier baptizing and healing the sick Indians, a work commissioned by Abbot Grenier de Morez for the Notre-Dame church, he was noticed by the ministry which in the following years ordered several copies of great masters from him, such as The Last Supper by Philippe de Champaigne (deposited at the church of Morez).
Empress Eugénie, who married Napoleon III in 1853, brought the century of Marie-Antoinette up to date, encouraging artists who revived the art of Fragonard, Watteau and Boucher.
Germain Paget composed numerous genre scenes in this style. In a bucolic setting full of freshness, he liked to represent children marauding in the countryside, or female characters evolving under the shade. These compositions are well known to collectors.
Germain Paget regularly returns to recharge his batteries in Morbier where he happily composes portraits of local notables such as Doctor Regad, mayor of Morez, (part. coll.), or members of his family.

In 1860, the Besançon Universal Exhibition opened an era of regional dynamism for Comtois artists. In addition, Germain's father is approaching seventy years old. Also, he is preparing his return by expanding his artist's studio in Morbier, where he will continue to paint. He exhibits his paintings in Besançon, Lons-le-Saunier, Dijon and Lyon and receives his artist friends from Paris and elsewhere in his small circle. He no longer exhibited in Paris after 1865.
The Adoration of the Shepherds, composed in 1868 and offered to the church of Morbier, is the last religious composition of Germain who devoted himself more readily to genre scenes, portraits, and landscapes which he exhibited until his death, in 1884.
Alongside his artistic activity, Germain now devoted himself, with his brother Désiré, to the manufacture of stamped pendulums and filed two patents in 1869 and 1870 for decorative mobile elements on a pendulum. He imagines the most varied motifs: sun, flowers, cornucopia, painted or gilded rural scenes.
Germain died unmarried in Morbier on December 8, 1884, and bequeathed his artist's studio to his nephew Léon, whom he trained in drawing and stamping.

Bibliography: Marie-Paule Renaud, Germain and Luc Paget, painter and engraver 1817-1921, 2008

Museums: Dole, Morez