Sale to Major European Museum

The Bredin-Lee Gallery and Myers & Monroe are honored to announce the sale of a painting to a French National Museum: The Orléans Museum of Fine Art (home to one of the oldest and most extensive public collections in France).

Oil on Canvas, 24 x 34.25 inches, signed and dated: Casimir de Cypierre 1829

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Casimir Florimond Perrin de Cypierre, Marquis of Cypierre, (1783-1844) is first remembered as one of the greatest collectors of 18th century paintings. The 1845 Christy’s catalogue of his estate sale laments his passing as a “loss for the glory of the French school, of which he saved so many precious works” (Thoré 7). Among the 211 catalogued pictures he possessed were Fragonards and Watteaus, a Prud’hon, a Vernet and a collection of Boucher drawings beyond that of the Louvre (6).

His collection, including his own works, was dispersed at the sale and the most important paintings can be found in national museums worldwide. One of his Fragonards, La Balançoire [...], is conserved in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Le Gilles by Watteau is now in the Louvre. A Chardin he owned can be seen in the Sao Paulo Art Museum. His Boucher portrait of Madame de Pompadour is now in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. The portrait of his grandmother by Nattier (1685- 1766), Portrait of a Lady, called the Marquise Perrin de Cypierre, passed through the hands of J. P. Morgan before landing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gallery 539. (Metropolitan Museum curators now reject the attribution of Cypierre’s grandmother as the sitter in the painting, but one could say she was the sitter for a while).

Perhaps Cypierre’s own work, like Bathing on the Lakeshore above, retains something of the man who “spent his entire life in love with and research of French painting;” a trace of a life touched by the greats (7).

Bathing on the Lakeshore is a charming work from the first third of the 19th century, measuring 30.5 x 41 inches with it’s original regilded frame. It is exemplary of the era’s Romantic Neoclassicism. Cypierre was one of the rare French artists of his time to paint Switzerland through picturesque and sublime landscapes (often grandiose alpine scenes near Bern). In this case, we see the mountain lake which he has turned into a nostalgic dream. It is unlikely that Roman ladies of leisure were bathing in Switzerland in 1829. His figurative fantasy provides an ambiance of hope, albeit somewhat distant, and asks whether you wouldn’t rather be there.

Lake Lucerne or Lake Thun in Switzerland are reasonable settings for the painting. Adolphe Siret’s 1848 “Historic Dictionary of Painters” lists Cypierre as working in the “environs of Lucerne.” As for Thun, the 1822 register of works at the Paris Salon confirms that Cypierre exposed a painting he owned; Vue près du lac de Thun, canton de Berne / “View near Lake Thun, Canton of Bern” (184). He therefore valued a picture of Lake Thun, and may have gone there to paint a scene of his own seven years later. Finally, Lakes Lucerne and Thun well resemble the background in Bathing on the Lakeshore.

A Canvas from the suppliers of Monet, Renoir, and Rousseau: Perhaps the next most interesting part of Bathing on the Lakeshore is where Cypierre bought his supplies. Color merchant Ange Ottoz, like Cypierre, had an important relationship with the arts and his stamp, indicating the shop’s address at 2 rue Michodière, is visible on the back of the canvas. The Ottoz family were a well established firm which supplied canvases to the Barbizon and Impressionist painters. Ange Ottoz stamp can also be found on the back of Rousseau’s Le Givre in the Walters Art Museam. Among others, Renoir’s At the Theatre and Monet’s View of the Prins Hendrikkade are stamped by the mark of Ange’s son, Alexis Ottoz (Bumford 42-43). The back of the painting also reveals marks of new varnish having been applied during cleaning.

Cypierre in Paris Salons:The “Critical Dictionary of Painters, 1911,” describes Cypierre as having “possessed a remarkable cabinet of modern paintings,” and having exhibited at the Salon of Paris from 1822-1839 (1056). In addition, later price records in the same dictionary indicate that the “5th Duke of M.” purchased a “landscape” for 280 francs on June 17th, 1919. Between 1748 and 1890 this exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris was arguably the most important art event of the Western world. Few works were accepted and the Impressionists were originally rejected. Eugène Delacroix’s The Barque ofDante, now in the Louvre, was exhibited as no. 309 at the 1822 Salon. The list also describes exhibition no. 280; Cypierre’s “landscape in the heart of the Bernese Alps,” (Vue prise au pied du Grand Scheidegg, en Suisse).

A Final Note: Cypierre not only had rather privileged experiences of art, but of history as well. In the middle of the 16th century, one of his direct ancestors was Governor to King Charles IX. His grandfather and father were intendants of Kings Louis XV-XVI in Orléans. Quai Cypierre, a main thoroughfare in Orleans is named after them. His family castle in southern Burgundy dates from the 12th century and Cypierre’s descendants operate a 30,000 tree Christmas tree farm there today.

Bibliography:

  • Dictionnaire Critique et Documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, & Graveurs, E. Bénézit, Tome 1, 1911, p. 1056.

  • Dictionnaire Historique des Peintre, Adolphe Siret, 1848.

  • Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture et gravure des

    artistes vivans, exposés au musée royal des arts le 24 avril 1822. C Ballard. 1822.

  • The Belle and Jack Linsky Collection in the Metropolitain Museum of Art.

  • The Art of Impressionism, Painting Technique and the Art of Modernity.

  • T. Thoré, Catalogue de Tableaux, M. de C..., 1845. P. 1-32.