14/2/23- Acquisition - Rouen, Musée Flaubert et d’Histoire de la Médecine - Located in the house where Gustave Flaubert was born, in a wing of the former Hôtel-Dieu of Rouen, the Musée Flaubert et d’Histoire de la Médecine has a literary and scientific vocation. It evokes both the youth of Flaubert, whose father, Achille Cléophas Flaubert, was a surgeon in these walls, and medical history from the 12th to the early 20th century. It is this second area of the collections which, thanks to a donation, has recently been enriched by an important painting by the Rouen painter Joseph-Désiré Court (ill. 1), who is also well represented in the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen - in particular by his monumental and late Martyrdom of Saint Agnes from the Salon of 1865 (see the news item of 21/6/08->1405]) - of which he was the curator from 1853.
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- 1. Joseph-Désiré Court (1797-1865)
A Lady Bringing Help to a Poor Sick Woman,
also known as The Lady of Charity Bringing Help to a Poor Woman, 1829
Oil on canvas - 99 x 130 cm
Rouen, Musée Flaubert et d’Histoire de la Médecine
Photo: Réunion des Musées métropolitains Rouen Normandie - See the image in its page
A pupil of Baron Gros at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where, like his master, he forged a solid reputation as a history painter and portraitist, Joseph-Désiré Court was equally renowned for his genre scenes, as evidenced by the painting that joins the Musée Flaubert et d’Histoire de la Médecine. As Jean-Loup Leguay - an art historian and documentalist at the Musée de Picardie in Amiens, and a specialist in the artist’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné (see research announcement) - points out in his detailed notice of the work [1], the scene depicted is an exemplum virtutis. In a dilapidated attic, a sickly woman lies on a straw bed, dressed in a white shirt and headdress and covered with a rustic, worn-out blanket, which reveals her rounded belly. Her head rests on a kind of pillow leaning against a trunk, and she looks up at the ceiling imploringly. She is holding the hand of her first-born child, who is sitting beside her in tears. Attached to the wall behind them are a font, from which a rosary hangs, and a crucifix decorated with boxwood branches. Under the loft is a print that is tending to come loose. It seems to represent an officer on horseback of the French troops, who could evoke the father of the unborn child. The right-hand side of the scene is animated by three other figures. An elegant lady dressed in black spreads her arms - which she holds out towards the unfortunate woman - in a large red tartan coat, while two male figures follow her in the doorway. Wearing a top hat, the first young man carries a basket of food, while the second carries on his shoulder an otherwise comfortable rolled mattress probably from the Mont-de-Piété in Rouen.
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- 2. Léon Noël (1807-1884), after Joseph-Désiré Court (1797-1865)
Benevolence, c. 1830
Lithograph
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France - See the image in its page
An edifying figure of mercy, evoking Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s popular Lady of Charity, the benefactress in the painting would be as much allegory as specific portraiture. Indeed, in its contemporary version lithographed by Léon Noël (ill. 2), the composition, entitled Benevolence, bears a dedication "to the Ladies of the Maternity Hospital of Rouen". As Jean-Loup Leguay points out, this reference most certainly refers to the Société de Charité maternelle de Rouen, a company that was very active throughout the 19th century, and whose aim was to help poor women when they gave birth and then to help them raise their children. The elegant protagonist performing a charitable act could be one of its emblematic representatives, its president Charlotte de Vanssay (1792-1864), wife of the prefect Charles-Achille de Vanssay (1779-1875). Whatever the personality represented, it is certain that Joseph-Désiré Court was linked to this Society. This is evidenced by the two drawings he gave it for its "Album(s) de la Maternité" - now unlocated - offered for sale at its annual charity sales in 1828 and 1829, thus the presence of A Lady Bringing Help to a Poor Sick Woman in the collection of Dr Charles-Auguste Hardy Des Alleurs (1796-1854), a doctor of this Society and a close friend of the painter, whose first biographer he was.
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- 3. Joseph-Désiré Court (1797-1865)
Woman with Half Body, Lying on a Couch, 1829
Oil on canvas - 81 x 66 cm
Montpellier, Musée Fabre
Photo: Frédéric Jaulmes - See the image in its page
As for the sickly young mother, it would seem that she represents Marie Court, the artist’s companion and late wife. As we already mentioned in the news item dedicated to the preemption of a masterpiece by Court by the Musée de Picardie (see news item of 20/9/21), although few titles mention her, she lent her features to several female figures represented by the artist in the 1820s-1830s: witness the effigies in the Louvre, in the Musée Magnin in Dijon or in the Musée Fabre (ill. 3) in Montpellier. The resemblance with the latter is striking both in the physical characteristics and in the reclining posture with the bust slightly enhanced by a cushion. Jean-Loup Leguay, in the light of the wife’s biography, better known since the article he devoted to her in the Bulletin de la Société d’Émulation d’Abbeville in 2020 [2], suggests that the Montpellier picture is the happy ending of a A Lady Bringing Help to a Poor Sick Woman. Marie Court, abandoned at birth and registered as a foundling at the hospice in Abbeville, found refuge with the painter, who cherished her and her son, whom he raised as his own.
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- 4. Nicolas-Eustache Maurin (1799-1850), after Joseph-Désiré Court (1797-1865)
The Foundling, c. 1829
Lithograph
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France - See the image in its page
Finally, the painting that joins Rouen should be compared with another composition by the artist related to the subject of charity and benevolence, A Capuchin Finds a Child at the Door of a Convent, now known from a contemporary lithograph by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin (ill. 4). The two paintings were shown together at an exhibition organised at the Galerie Lebrun in Paris in 1829 for the benefit of the fund opened for the extinction of begging.