Auguste Flandrin (1804 - 1842), Portrait of Madame Chastel -1834

Oil on canvas. 29 x 37 cm. Signed lower left.

Madame Chastel, born in 1780 as Marguerite Olphe-Galliard (Olphi family), wife of François Chastel, cloth merchant of the firm Chastel-Galliard & Co., rue Mercière, and owner of the priory of Taluyers.

The eldest of seven children and brother of Hippolyte and Paul Flandrin, René Auguste Flandrin studied composition and painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. In 1833 he moved to Paris to study under Ingres.

He declined to follow his master to Rome and remained in Lyon, where he began to establish a reputation as an accomplished artist. He died young, at only 38 years old. René Auguste Flandrin’s studio attracted a number of pupils who went on to prove themselves, including Louis Lamothe, Joseph Pagnon, Cabuchet and Chancel. Flandrin was awarded a bronze medal in 1840.

Madame Chastel, born Marguerite Olphe-Galliard, belonged to an old French bourgeois family originally from the Gapençais region in Dauphiné. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, a branch of this family settled in Lyon, where several members worked as cloth merchants. From this lineage would later emerge intellectuals, industrialists, officers, and clergymen, divided between Lyon and Hendaye.

The sitter here appears to be Marguerite, born in 1780 and deceased in 1850, from the Gaillard family, who married François Raymond Chastel (1758–1841), merchant and trader in Lyon. This family background highlights the social and economic standing of the subject, reflecting a cultivated bourgeoisie firmly rooted in the commercial and intellectual fabric of France.