Lot Essay
Born into the Grenoble bourgeoisie, Ernest Hébert showed an early talent for drawing which led him to the studio of Benjamin Rolland, a former student of David. In 1834 he went to Paris, studying both at the law school and the Ecole de Beaux-Arts where he was a student of the sculptor David d'Angers and the painter Paul Delaroche.
Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1839, Hébert left for Rome the following year and was greeted there by his cousin Henri Beyle - better known as Stendhal - and Ingres, then director of the Villa Médicis.
This depiction of a peasant family - the figures, for example the pifferaro, or fife player, in the pointed hat, are traditional rustic Italian types - leaving the disease ridden Latium marshlands, was awarded first prize at the 1850 Salon, ensuring Hébert a long and successful 'official' career.
The Salon picture won huge critical acclaim. 'This work is as representative of the second half of the XIXth century as the Raft of the Medusa is for the first ...' (Delécluze; Exposition des artistes vivants, 1850, p. 34).
If the picture invites comparison with Géricault's masterpiece, it quietly inverts that painting's histrionic despair. The pervading 'morbidezza' (T. Gautier) of La Malaria is discreetly, almost invisibly, energized by a number of elements. The infant, the ray of light piercing the clouds, the faint outline of a church steeple in the distance on the left, the Madonna and child icon in the corner of the boat, the swallow skimming over the water in the lower right-hand corner and, of course, the standing figure, an anti-Charon, who guides his feverish passengers away from danger and from death - all are emblems of hope.
Purchased by the state, the painting how hangs in the Hébert Museum in Paris. Hébert executed many preparatory drawings for the individual figures as well as several replicas of the Salon painting itself. Our painting is a smaller replica given by the artist to his friend the Comte Gabriel de Putecotte de Reneville.
Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1839, Hébert left for Rome the following year and was greeted there by his cousin Henri Beyle - better known as Stendhal - and Ingres, then director of the Villa Médicis.
This depiction of a peasant family - the figures, for example the pifferaro, or fife player, in the pointed hat, are traditional rustic Italian types - leaving the disease ridden Latium marshlands, was awarded first prize at the 1850 Salon, ensuring Hébert a long and successful 'official' career.
The Salon picture won huge critical acclaim. 'This work is as representative of the second half of the XIXth century as the Raft of the Medusa is for the first ...' (Delécluze; Exposition des artistes vivants, 1850, p. 34).
If the picture invites comparison with Géricault's masterpiece, it quietly inverts that painting's histrionic despair. The pervading 'morbidezza' (T. Gautier) of La Malaria is discreetly, almost invisibly, energized by a number of elements. The infant, the ray of light piercing the clouds, the faint outline of a church steeple in the distance on the left, the Madonna and child icon in the corner of the boat, the swallow skimming over the water in the lower right-hand corner and, of course, the standing figure, an anti-Charon, who guides his feverish passengers away from danger and from death - all are emblems of hope.
Purchased by the state, the painting how hangs in the Hébert Museum in Paris. Hébert executed many preparatory drawings for the individual figures as well as several replicas of the Salon painting itself. Our painting is a smaller replica given by the artist to his friend the Comte Gabriel de Putecotte de Reneville.