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Alexandre-Hyacinthe DUNOUY
(Paris, 1757 - Jouy en Josas, 1841)
View from the Parc de Saint-Cloud
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
H. 31.5 cm; L. 24 cm
Circa 1820
Provenance :
-Perhaps sale after the artist's death, March 7-8, 1842, Paris, Hôtel des Ventes de la rue des Jeuneurs.
Jeuneurs, catalog no. 97, titled Etude : vue prise à Saint-Cloud
-Perhaps Sale of a fine collection of paintings, November 4-5, 1842, Paris, 2 place de la Bourse,
Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs, catalog no. 38, title Vue prise dans le parc de Saint-Cloud
An important neo-classical artist of the late 18th and first third of the 19th centuries, Dunouy, along with painters such as Jean-Victor Bertin and Bidauld, was part of the historical landscape tradition initiated by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. He spent two periods in Italy: the first in the late 1780s, on the advice of Hubert Robert, where he explored the Roman and Neapolitan regions; the second between 1810 and 1815, during which time he was Murat's official painter in the Kingdom of Naples.
Returning to Paris after several weeks in Lyon during the Restoration, he continued to receive state commissions under Louis XVIII, and to exhibit at the Salon until 1833. Paul Marmottan said of him: "...he must be placed in the first rank of landscape painters...for imagination, poetry, color and drawing...Dunouy appeared at all the exhibitions of his time".
Stylistically, our on-the-spot study corresponds well to the calm, pastoral atmospheres, soft light and palette of gray/green/blue tones favored by Dunouy, making him perhaps the most "Poussinesque" of neo-classical landscape painters, and also somewhat reminiscent of the works of Etienne Allegrain painted over a century earlier.
Dunouy had already represented Saint-Cloud in a painting presented at the Salon of 1804, Vue générale de Saint-Cloud et de ses environs, acquired by the French State. The artist returned to the area as part of Louis XVIII's project to decorate the château. At the Salon of 1819, he exhibited a Vue du parc de Saint-Cloud, prise de Sèvres, possibly the canvas (46 x 65 cm) now in the Musée de Sceaux.
For our painting, Dunouy was probably stationed near the Pavillon de Breteuil; we can see the old Saint-Cloud bridge over the Seine, and in the background, slightly to the left, the silhouette of Mont Valérien.
Our work certainly corresponds to the study acquired at the after-death sale of Dunouy's studio, and resold at auction a few months later along with several other works by the artist also from his after-death sale.
