10/3/23 - Acquisition - Senlis, Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie - "If you take models, [...] surprise them; let them not know that you are looking at them. A few quickly drawn lines, your observations and a few notes taken on the fire of your impressions will guide you much better than those awful models that lead you astray [1]." Thus Thomas Couture advised his pupils.
Among the latest acquisitions of the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie de Senlis, a hand study - exhibited in the galerie Hubert Duchemin [2] - was donated by Jacques Foucart and Élisabeth Foucart-Walter in memory of Bruno Foucart who died in 2018 (see news item 5/1/18).
The museum, which owns many works by the Senlis-born painter, had acquired two other oil sketches in 2014 and 2015, one for an angel linked to the decoration of the chapel of the Virgin in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris, and another for The Flagellation of Christ, a youthful painting done in 1838 (see the news item of 20/10/15). An exhibition was also devoted to Thomas Couture by several museums simultaneously in 2016 (see the article).
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- 1. Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
The Hand of Maître de Bénazé, study for L’Avocat plaidant
Oil on canvas - 33 x 41 cm
Senlis, Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie
Photo: Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie - See the image in its page
This study is preparatory to a canvas painted around 1875 entitled L’Avocat plaidant. The Senlis museum has a pen drawing which gives an idea of the composition (ill. 2). Two other oil sketches are studies for the pleader’s face and for his left hand pointing to a code of laws; they are in the Joey and Toby Tenenbaum collection at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario (ill. 3 and 4).
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- 2. Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
L’Avocat plaidant, c. 1875,
Pen and brown ink - 14.2 x 17.7 cm
Senlis, Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie
Photo: Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie - See the image in its page
The figure Couture depicted was Théodore-Auguste de Bénazé, a lawyer in Senlis, whom he had observed in his duties. The painter had taken refuge in his native town from 1861 onwards, fleeing the Parisian critics and public. He had set up a studio in the chapel of the former bishop’s palace, which is now the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie.
This hand expresses the eloquence of the lawyer, it evokes discussion and transmission. This gesture can be found in another composition by the artist, more precisely in a drawing (kept in the Beauvais Museum), which was a preparation for a painting entitled Pierrot en correctionnelle. Couture had moved to the court of Senlis to multiply the sketches. The figure of the lawyer appears in the background of the drawing, but disappears from the final painting, the artist having organised his composition differently.
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- 3. Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
The Head of Maître de Bénazé, study for L’Avocat plaidant, c. 1875,
Oil on canvas - 37.8 x 45.8 cm
Joey and Toby Tenenbaum Collection
Ontario, Art Gallery of Hamilton - See the image in its page
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- 4. Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
The Left Hand of Maître de Bénazé Leafing through a Book, study for L’Avocat plaidant, c. 1875
Oil on canvas - 33.8 x 42 cm
Joey and Toby Tenenbaum Collection
Ontario, Art Gallery of Hamilton - See the image in its page
Working from life was essential in his creative process. He made numerous sketches from life, sketching attitudes, studying details, working out the modelling in pencil or oil, before setting up his composition.
Several detailed hand studies have been preserved, for example. The Senlis Museum thus preserves a study of another hand and an arm, with a scroll and drapery, in preparation for La Noblesse painted in 1867-1877. This is a deposit of the Palais de Compiègne, which also possesses a hand with a quill and an inkwell, preparatory to The Enlistment of Volunteers (c. 1848).
The painting of L’Avocat plaidant belonged for a time to the founder Ferdinand Barbedienne [3], a close friend of the painter, while the studies of the two hands were owned by the American portrait painter George Pierre Healy, a friend of Couture.