ELIZABETH EMMA SOYER (LONDON 1813-1842)
ELIZABETH EMMA SOYER (LONDON 1813-1842)
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ELIZABETH EMMA SOYER (LONDON 1813-1842)

The escape: a young girl with a bird cage

Details
ELIZABETH EMMA SOYER (LONDON 1813-1842)
The escape: a young girl with a bird cage
signed and dated 'E. Jones · fecit / 1836' (lower right)
oil on canvas, unframed
29 7/8 x 24 ¾ in. (76 x 63 cm.)
Provenance
The artist's sale; (†), Christie's, London, 5 March 1859, lot 111, 'THE ESCAPE: A Child with a Birdcage' (15 gns.).
Anonymous sale; Brussels Art Auctions, Brussels, 23 March 2021, lot 133, where acquired by the present owner.
Literature
F. Volant and J. R. Warren, eds., Memoirs of Alexis Soyer; with unpublished receipts and odds and ends of gastronomy, London, 1859, p. 141.
Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, 1837, no. 197, 'The escape'.

Brought to you by

Lucy Speelman
Lucy Speelman Junior Specialist, Head of Part II

Lot Essay


Born in London in 1813, Elizabeth Emma Jones became a pupil of François Simonau (1783-1859), a Belgian painter who had studied with Baron Gros in Paris. In 1818, when the artist was only five, Emma’s mother Elizabeth induced Simonau to drop his other students so that he could devote all his time to the instruction of her precocious daughter. Emma also showed considerable promise as a pianist while under the tutelage of Jean Ancot and, for a period, it looked as though her future lay in the musical world. However, on a trip to Dunkirk, Emma made an impromptu drawing of children blowing bubbles on a wall, a work of such visual force that her mother, by then married to Simonau, decided her daughter must make painting her principal study. In April 1837 Emma married the celebrated French chef, writer and inventor Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) who, around the time of their marriage, had been appointed head chef of the recently founded Reform Club in Pall Mall. Emma executed a highly engaging portrait of her husband (private collection, on loan to the Reform Club), in which the sitter is shown holding a raised fork with one of his famous lamb cutlets. On 30 August 1842, aged only 28, Emma died at their home near Charring Cross following complications with her pregnancy, brought on by fright owing to a thunderstorm.

Between 1823 and 1843, she exhibited fourteen pictures at the Royal Academy, thirty-eight at the British Institution and fourteen at the Suffolk Street Gallery. A recently rediscovered work, dated 1831, of two young black girls seated together with a bible is now on long term loan to Tate Britain, London.

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