Portrait of a Woman in a Head Scarf

Details

THÉODORE CHASSÉRIAU (1819-1856)
Portrait of a Woman in a Head Scarf
charcoal and white chalk on paper, the lower left corner made up by the artist
17 5⁄8 x 11 5⁄8 in. (44.7 x 29.5 cm.)

Provenance

The artist's studio stamp (L. 443); probably the studio sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16-17 March 1857 (catalogue untraced).
Shepherd Gallery, New York, by 1984.
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27 November 1987, lot 2.
Galerie Schmit, Paris, by 1988.
Robert Schmit (1920-2008) and Nadine Schmit (d.2025), Paris, then by descent; their sale, Sotheby’s, Paris, 24 March 2022, lot 126.
Acquired at the above sale.

Literature

L.-A. Prat, Cahiers du dessin français. Théodore Chassériau 1819-1856: Dessins conservés en dehors du Louvre, Paris, 1988, p. 27, no. 203.

Exhibited

New York, Shepherd Gallery, French Nineteenth Century Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Watercolors, Spring 1984, no. 40.
New York, Shepherd Gallery, Twenty Nineteenth Century Works of Art: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 1986, no. 9.
Paris, Galerie Schmit, Maîtres français: XIX^e-XX^e siècles, 1988, no. 16 (as Portrait de la sœur de l’artiste, and with provenance from the Cantacuzène family, Paris).

Conditions of sale

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Leo Webster Specialist

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Lot Essay

This powerful drawing is a preparatory study for the kneeling woman behind the Virgin in Chassériau's fresco 'Le Christ descendu de la croix' commissioned by the French Ministry of the Interior in 1852 for the apse of the Église Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Paris and painted between 1852 and 1855. In addition to the fresco, the composition is also seen in a finished maquette in the Petit Palais, Paris (inv. PPP4541) and an oil sketch in the Musée d'Orsay (inv. RF 3906). The drawing may also relate to Chassériau’s 1856 oil 'L'Adoration des Mages' (inv. PDUT1808; S. Guégan et al, Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856): The Unknown Romantic, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002, no.232.). Two versions of this drawing are known: the present sheet, and a less finished drawing, which appeared on the French art market in 2021 (J.P. Osenat, Fontainebleau, 26 September 2021, lot 107) - a rare occurrence in the artist's œuvre; only six or seven examples of Chassériau repeating a subject survive, including portraits of his brother Ernest (1823-1870) and his favourite model, Princess Marie Cantacuzène (1820-1898) (L.-A. Prat, op-cit).

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