Pierre-Jean-Edmond Castan (1817-92) Collecting Eggs with Mother

Oil on panel, signed lower right Edmond Castan
Paris, date circa 1867
In a modern giltwood frame
33 x 26 cm.
Pierre-Jean-Edmond Castan was an accomplished realist and genre painter, who was also known for his landscape paintings, his portraiture and his ability as an engraver. As a genre painter, Castan specialised in depicting scenes from the daily lives of working families in nineteenth century France. As this painting demonstrates, his paintings are characterised by attention to detail and accuracy in terms of traditional costume and interiors. He rarely painted images of bourgeois life, but neither did he depict extreme poverty. Such scenes included fisherfolk, a mother and her children leaving church, children playing games and above all everyday scenes of domestic life, where a mother might be tending her children or as here, where they are helping her gather eggs from the hen house. His subject matter primarily focused on rural and provincial working people that spring to life in the novels of Honoré de Balzac. Castan’s paintings often convey a message about everyday life, emphasising its joys, fears and tragedies and in this respect, his work can be compared to the British artist David Wilkie (1785-1841), or the Irish American painter Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895).
Born on 28th November 1817 in Toulouse, in Haute-Garrone, Pierre-Jean-Edmond Castan was the son of Jean Bernard Castan (b. circa 1789 d.1857) and Henriette née Mercadal (d. 1846) who had married one another the year before Pierre-Jean-Edmond’s birth; he also had several younger siblings. After attending school, Castan studied in Paris under Michel Martin Drolling (1786-1851), a Neoclassical painter noted especially for his historical pictures, portraiture and to a lesser extent his domestic genre scenes. Castan also studied in the Paris studio of François Girard, who was probably Alexis François Girard (1787–1870), who taught him the art of engraving.
Having completed his studies, Castan made his exhibition debut at the Paris Salon in 1844 when he showed a landscape titled Vue Prise dans le Gers as well as a portrait. From then on he was a prolific exhibitor counting among his many works shown in Paris such as Le Braconnier (The Poacher; 1852), La Sieste pendant la Moisson (The Harvest Rest; 1863), L’Attente du Retour des Pêcheurs, la Jeune Mère (Awaiting the Fishermen’s Return, the Young Mother; 1869) and Les Deux Orphelines (The Two Orphans; 1872). His painting L’Epave (The Wreck), which hung at the Exposition Universelle in 1867, was most likely the picture of the same title now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes. Another work of dramatic pathos known now as The Terrible News, dating from 1864, depicts a woman and child, grief-stricken at receiving bad news, most likely of a fisherman lost at sea. In 1869, along with L’Attente du Retour des Pêcheurs, la Jeune Mère, Castan also painted The Good News, depicting a scene in which a young woman reads a letter to her mother, while a child happily plays with a spinning wheel.
The present painting is one of peace and domestic tranquillity in which a young mother goes into the hen house to collect eggs. Inside the darkened interior is a spade and other tools as well as a water barrel and jug above it, on the floor the hens are busily pecking at grain, while the mother’s two children are standing in the open doorway, beyond which you can see foliage and part of a building bathed in sunlight. This was a typical composition for Castan in which the main setting is an interior or an enclosed space with either an opened window or door, set to one side, which allows light to stream in and highlight the main narrative. The model for the mother may well have been one of his wives (who were sisters of one another), since her broad open face, dark hair and serene features are characteristic of many of the female characters within his paintings, such as in Coming out of Church (1867; Dover Collections, Kent). Likewise, as we see here, he often portrayed two children, one being a girl and the other a younger boy. In all likelihood, these were probably his own children. Castan was married twice, firstly to Anne Delphine Levasseur (1818-54), whom he married on 16th October 1847 in the parish of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. Their only known child was a son named André-Edmond, who was born in April 1848 but only survived ten months. On 12th April 1856, about two years after Anne Delphine’s death, Castan married her younger sister Félicie Levasseur (1826-63), with whom he had a daughter named Pauline Marie Félicie (b. 1857) and a son named André Jean (b. 1862), which means that if they were the models for the present oil, then our painting probably dates from around 1867, since the girl and boy look about ten and five years old, respectively.
Mention has been made of Castan as an engraver. Among those works, Castan executed an engraving of Portrait d’un Turc (1842), after Victor Francois Eloi Biennourry (1823-93), who had also been a student under Drolling; a portrait of M. Haumet, cure de Saint-Marguerité in Paris, after Leopold Parnet, as well as a portrait of Pope Pious IX and one of Faustin, Emperor of Haiti. Probably his finest engraving was his rendition of the painting of Michelange Buonarotti by Alexandre Cabanel (1823-89), which shows the Renaissance artist Michelangelo seated in his studio, looking at the statue of Moses he is working on; in the background are other of his statues such the Two Slaves and the Pietà while on the right, Pope Julius II is entering the room. The engraving was published by Goupil and Knoedler, of which there is an example in the British Museum, London. Another of Castan’s engravings in the British Museum is his rendition of Le Baiser Maternel (The Maternal Kiss) by Auguste Toulmouche (1829-90), which was also published by Knoedler and Goupie & Cie. Goupil et Cie may well have been one of the main galleries to represent Castan’s art since they retailed a number of his works, for instance his painting The Good News, which was being offered for sale by them in 1869, the year the work was completed. In addition, they published a number of engravings after Castan’s original oils including Douce Contemplation of 1865, showing a charming scene of young mother seated beside a fire, watching over her baby in its cradle.