A painting by Henri Le Secq for Rouen

21/11/24 - Acquisition - Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts - Henri Le Secq des Tournelles was a pioneer of photography and a collector in the rather unexpected field of ironwork, but he was also a little-known painter. In 2024, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen acquired a picture depicting a scene in the port of Naples, which is relatively large compared with other paintings by him (ill. 1). Put up for auction by Dorotheum in 2023, the work was exhibited at Tefaf by the Giacometti Old Master Paintings Gallery [1]; it was finally acquired and donated by the Friends of the Museum, through the intermediary of Diederik Bakhuÿs [2]. It joins in the collections a Young Italian Woman at the Fountain sold for 2048 euros in an Ader sale on 13 June 2019 and also purchased by the Association des Amis des musées d’Art de Rouen (ill. 2).

1.Henri Le Secq des Tournelles (1818-1882)
Tarantella Scene in the Port of Naples, 1845
Oil on canvas - 61 x 92 cm
Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Photo: Giacometti Old Master Paintings

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Henri Le Secq trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1835 and 1840; he passed through the studio of the sculptor James Pradier and then that of the painter Paul Delaroche, where he became friends with Gustave Le Gray and Charles Nègre, with whom he turned to photography. His paintings consisted mainly of genre scenes, with a few portraits and landscapes, which he exhibited regularly at the Salon between 1842 and 1880. He travelled in Italy from 1843 to 1846, from where he sent canvases to the Salon in Paris, in particular Siesta of the Models in 1845, which won him third prize. In the painting acquired by Rouen - which he signed Henry and not Henri, as he later did in most of his works - he depicts musicians in the port of Naples: on the right, two haughty young women, their faces almost stern, stand dressed in traditional southern Italian costume; one of them carries a tambourine. In the centre, a man has…