Offered by GSLR Antiques
French school of the late 18th or early 19th century, pair of interior scenes in the antique style representing two young women seated in a decor and furniture of Greco-Roman antiquity: a vestal sitting on a chair in the Etruscan style, holding an urn. On the right, we can see a tripod table used as an altar, on which an ember brandon is burning, releasing incense.
The muse is also seated, at the edge of a pedestal table, playing the harp. Oil on canvas, both paintings are presented in their original gilded wood frame. France, Consulate period, circa 1800, in the taste of Constance Marie Charpentier.
Constance-Marie Charpentier (1767-1849) was a French painter of the neoclassicism. Little is known about her artistic training and only her style allows us to identify her potential masters: Jean-Georges Wille, Jacques-Louis David, Louis Lafitte, François Gérard and Pierre Bouillon. What is certain is that she joined David's studio in 1787.
Constance-Marie-Charpentier painted genre scenes and portraits, mainly of children and women.
In 1798, she received an encouragement prize from the Ministry of the Interior for The Widow of a Day and The Widow of a Year. Her painting Mélancolie is remarkable because women painters do not usually tackle work of this complexity and are confined to painting still lifes, portraits or genre scenes. From 1798 to 1821 (or from 1795 to 1819), she exhibited about 50 paintings in various Salons, winning a gold medal in 1814 at the Paris Salon, and a silver medal in 1821 at the Salon de Douai. In 1801, she was noticed for her painting "La Mélancolie" that the French State bought "as an encouragement".
It is this painting "Melancholy" that led us to make the connection with the work of Constance Marie Charpentier: many similarities in the composition, the subject, the way of painting the faces, the feet and the same period. Our painting is of good quality. In the absence of a signature, we cannot say with certainty if it is a work of Constance Marie Charpentier or the work of a talented follower.
Nevertheless, our paintings are very interesting because of the quality of their execution, their antique subject matter and especially the furniture and decor that are represented. We recognize a chair of Jacob and the tripod pedestal table used as an altar is inspired by productions of Thomire.
Nice amateur set.
Our paintings are in excellent condition: on their original canvas, the cleaning done by our gilder was probably the first since the origin. The canvases are intact, without any patching or repainting. The paintings are presented in their original frames, gilded with gold leaf.
Dimensions of the canvas 63x47,5cm
Size of the frame 73x57cm
