3/9/10 – Acquisitions – Vizille, Musée de la Révolution Française – The acquisitions policy at the Musée de la Révolution Française in Vizille pursues a dual objective : works executed during the revolutionary period (see news item of 5/8/10) and successive ones presenting notably the 19th century vision of the French Revolution.
In the second of three articles highlighting the museum’s acquisitions since 2007, we will discuss here paintings from a later period which illustrate revolutionary episodes.
1. Paul Delaroche (1797-1856)
Marie Antoinette Before the Court, c. 1850
Oil on panel - 21.5 x 16.5 cm
Vizille, Musée de la Révolution Française
Photo : Musée de la Révolution Française
2. Paul Delaroche (1797-1856)
Marie Antoinette Before the Court, 1851
Oil on canvas
Forbes Collection
Photo : Didier Rykner
In 2007, the museum purchased a study (ill. 1) for Paul Delaroche’s famous canvas, today held at the château de Balleroy in the Forbes Magazine Collection, of Marie Antoinette Before the Court (ill. 2) from the Terradès Gallery in Paris. It depicts the queen, just after she was sentenced to death on 16 October 1793 as she walks out of the courtroom in dignity passing in front of a crowd of people. In the final painting, the spectators watch silently, impressed by the queen’s calm whereas the preliminary study shows several of them shouting at her.
3. Charles-Louis Müller (1815-1892)
Head of the Bailiff Calling the Last Victims of the Terror, c. 1850
Charcoal heightened with chalk
Vizille
Musée de la Révolution Française
Photo : Musée de la Révolution Française
4. Charles-Louis Müller (1815-1892)
The Last Victims of the Terror Are Called, 1850
Oil on canvas - 505 x 890 cm
Vizille, Musée de la Révolution Française
Photo : Musée de la Révolution Française
The following year, Max Moulin and Jacques Vilain donated a drawing by Charles-Louis Müller (ill. 3). This sheet is a study of the bailiff as he proceeds to call out the names of those sentenced to death for the large painting which the artist exhibited at the Salon of 1850 and which was placed on deposit in 1992 at Vizille by the Musée du château de Versailles, The Last Victims of the Terror Are Called (ill. 4). The Musée de la Révolution Française already owned a preparatory drawing, squared up, for the composition.
5. William Henry Fisk (1827-1884)
Robespierre Receiving Letters from
Friends of his Victims
with Assassination Threats, 1863
Oil on canvas - 64 x 100 cm
Vizille, Musée de la Révolution Française
Photo : Galerie Lécuyer
In 2009, the museum acquired a painting by a British artist, William Fisk, representing Robespierre Receiving Letters from Friends of his Victims with Assassination Threats (ill. 5), from the Lécuyer Gallery in Paris. This little-known painter exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy where he presented this canvas in 1863. Three years later, he also showed there Waiting for Publication of the Moniteur with News of Robespierre’s Arrest, today in Preston at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery.
6. William James Grant (1826-1866)
The Cockade
Oil on panel - D. 24 cm
Vizille, Musée de la Révolution Française
Photo : Musée de la Révolution Française
Finally, in 2010 the museum purchased another work reflecting British interest in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, directly from a private collector in the Rhône-Alpes region. This is a wooden panel in tondo form by William James Grant, The Cockade (ill. 6), representing Josephine de Beauharnais with her daughter Hortense in mourning, contemplating the rosette (“Cockade”) on the three-cornered hat belonging to her husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, a Republican general guillotined in 1794 (but from whom she had separated in 1785). In 1858, a few years before this painting was executed in the 1860’s, the artist had painted Eugène de Beauharnais Refusing to Give Up his Father’s Sword.
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