15/5/23 - Acquisition - Pau, Musée national du château de Pau - It was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful paintings of the Talabardon & Gautier sales, which we had already spotted on their gallery stand during the 2017 edition of Tefaf New York (see article) devoted to old masters (a fair that has now disappeared): the Bay Horse by François Gérard (ill. 1) was finally preempted by a museum, the Château de Pau, for the sum of €40,960 with fees, at the first auction under the gavel of Me Nordmann.
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- 1. François Gérard (1770-1837)
Study of a Horse for the Entry of Henri IV into Paris, 1816
Oil on canvas - 80.8 x 64.6 cm
Pau, Musée national du château
Photo: Ader - See the image in its page
We can only be delighted with this acquisition. The work is truly masterful: an unfinished study of Henry IV’s mount for the painting kept at Versailles Henri IV’s Entry into Paris in 1594 (ill. 2), it is both a painting and a drawing, with the bottom of the animal’s legs only traced in black chalk, thus testifying to the way the artist worked. The background of the painting is also only half covered with a beautiful blue colour, while the lower half still shows the canvas. There is a pencil notation on the right-hand side, but unfortunately this is almost illegible. As the Ader sale catalogue points out, this "sketch illustrates the painter’s technique as described by Marie-Eléonor Godefroid (1778-1849), his pupil: "He decided on his compositions by establishing the drawing and the effect on the canvas with his own hand through a first sketch"".
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- 2. François Gérard (1770-1837)
The Entry of Henri IV into Paris in 1594, 1816-1817
Oil on canvas - 510 x 958 cm
Versailles, Musée national du château de Versailles
Photo: Histoire Wiki (CC BY-SA 4.0) - See the image in its page
This painting can be traced back to its inheritance by the painter’s nephew, Baron Henri Gérard, who passed it on to his daughter, Countess Marie Foy. It remained in his family until it was sold at the Hôtel Drouot by Kapandji-Morhange, where it was acquired by the gallery. The hammer price at the time, €100,000 (approximately €125,000 including fees), was very high and the museum can be considered to have made an excellent deal. The collections of the Château de Pau are centred around the figure of Henri IV. It was therefore logical that it should buy this painting, rather than Versailles.
The final work was commissioned by the King’s Household in 1816 and presented at the Salon the following year, where it was a great success. King Louis XVIII in particular liked the painting so much that, during his second visit to the Salon, he appointed François Gérard as his first painter. Such subjects celebrating royalty through one of the most beloved French sovereigns, Henri IV, was undoubtedly a means for royalist propaganda to make people forget the Revolutionary and Empire periods, even if it was done by a painter who had already had a successful career under those regimes. Louis XVIII was the worthy and legitimate successor of the first Bourbon king.
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- 3. François Gérard (1770-1837)
The Entry of Henri IV into Paris in 1594
Oil on canvas - 173 x 325 cm
Chartres, Musée des Beaux-Arts (deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Photo: Musée du Louvre - See the image in its page
The episode depicted is, moreover, particularly significant and may explain the importance it had for the king who had recently arrived on the throne. Henri IV made his entry into Paris just after his coronation in Chartres. Louis-Philippe was not to be mistaken, making this painting, another by the same artist, The Battle of Austerlitz and two other ones by Horace Vernet (The Battle of Bouvines and The Battle of Fontenoy, from 1827 and 1828), the four works around which the Gallery of Battles was conceived from 1833. Even more than his cousin, he too needed to assert his legitimacy, taking his cue from all the sovereigns who had preceded him, including Napoleon.
An autograph replica, smaller but still measuring 3.25 m wide, is on deposit with the Louvre at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chartres (ill. 3).