Exhibitions in Paris galleries: Nouvelle Athènes and Chaptal

24/11/23 - Art market - Paris - Twice a year, the Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes presents works mainly from the 19th century, and publishes a catalogue to mark the occasion. This year, November 2023, is no exception to tradition, and once again we are discovering some fine works, often previously unseen, many of which have been or will be acquired by museums. More on these later.

1. Geneviève-Charlotte Simon, called Eugénie Dalton (1802-1859)
A Kingfisher, c. 1834
Oil on canvas - 24.5 × 32.4 cm
Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes
Photo: Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes

See the image in its page

The Musée Delacroix would very much have liked to have been enriched by a work by Eugénie Dalton, a little-known female artist, pupil and mistress of Delacroix who made her the model for one of his angels in Christ in the Olive Garden in the church of Saint Paul-Saint-Louis, and no doubt one of the women of Algiers. His Kingfisher (ill. 1) was exhibited at the Salon of 1834 under the title Petit oiseau mort dans un marais, then the following year in Valenciennes under the both more but less precise title A Kingfisher. As the catalogue entry rightly points out, the work recalls a painting by Delacroix seven years earlier, his famous Still Life with a Lobster, in which the still life is depicted, as here, in the middle of a landscape. In the end, it was a private collector who benefited from this work, to which we will return shortly.

2. Irma Martin (1814-1876)
Ondine Gives Her Husband the Kiss That Will Cause His Death, 1842
Oil on canvas - 71 × 58 cm
Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes
Photo: Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes

See the image in its page

Another woman painter, Irma Martin, a pupil of Charles Steuben, is just as little known as Eugénie Dalton, but the painting shown here (ill. 2) is also very beautiful. It depicts a scene taken from a German tale by Friedrich de La Motte-Fouqué, a curious story in which the unfaithful husband of a "water girl"…