ÉDOUARD DETAILLE
French, 1848-1912
La Lecture du Journal au Luxembourg
Signed and dated E. DETAILLE/ 1869
Oil on canvas
8¾ x 6¼ inches (22.3 x 16 cm)
Framed: 16¼ x 14 inches (41.3 x 35.5 cm)
This work depicts a group of “Incroyables” gathered in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris. The central standing figure is depicted reading the journal La Père Duchesne. We are grateful to François Robichon, President of the Association des Amis d’Édouard Detaille, for his assistance in the cataloguing of this work.
“The incroyable,” writes the author of the Catalogue of the James H. Stebbins Collection in 1889, “was one of the most curious products of the great French Revolution. He was the antithesis of the revolutionist, the sans-culotte who gave too much attention to death to spare time for dress. The maddest extravagance of dandyism was indulged in by the incroy-able, who won his familiar nickname by the incredible exaggeration of his costumes and customs. He literally, as his title would imply, carried his worship of the wild vagaries of foolish fashion past all belief. His appearance was a protest against the brutal abandonment of all the gentler practices of life that characterized the reaction against aristocratic and polite existence which came with the commencement of the revolution.”
Provenance
Private Collection, Ohio
Literature
Marius Vachon, Detaille, Paris, 1898, pp. 14, 164
$18,500