Eugène Isabey
(Paris 1803 – 1886 Montévrain/Seine-et-Marne)
A Farmhouse, c. 1830
Black chalk
27 x 23.7 cm
Signed on the verso "Eug. Isabey, Paris"
EXHIBITIONS
Exh. cat. Hamburger Kunsthalle und Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Die Campe'sche Historische Kunststiftung. Erwerbungen seit 1945, 1964, p. 25, no. 258.
LITERATURE
Pierre Miquel, Eugène Isabey. 1803-1886. La Marine au XIXe siècle, Maurs-la-Jolie, 1980, p. 115, no. 338 (ill.)
PROVENANCE
Collection Boguslaw Jolles, Dresden/Vienna (Lugt 381a)
Hugo Helbing, Munich, October 28-31, 1895, Collection B. Jolles
Collection Michael Berolzheimer, Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Sale Adolf Weinmüller, Munich, March 9-10, 1939, no. 665
Kunsthalle Hamburg, Lugt 1234, on verso, inv. no. 1954/111
Restituted to the heirs of Michael Berolzheimer 2015
Eugène Isabey was a French romantic, known generally for his marine subjects featuring stormy seas. However, he also cultivated a picturesque style represented in this rendering of a tumble-down farmhouse. His manner is energetic, the stroke almost vibrates and in the mastery of atmospheric effects he anticipates Impressionism.
Our drawing, documented in the oeuvre catalogue of Pierre Miquel, is typical of the early work to be dated c. 1830. The farmhouses were sketched from the motif either in the Ile de France or Normandy and fully rendered in the Paris atelier. Isabey was a gifted lithographer: in 1831 he travelled through the Auvergne capturing images to be used in the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancien France edited by Baron Taylor. Our drawing is stylistically close to these landscape lithographs.
Eugène was a student of his father, the painter of portrait miniatures Jean-Baptiste Isabey. In 1830 Eugène rose to peintre officiel de la Marine royale and also painted a large number of historical genre subjects featuring architecture such as seen in our drawing.
David Mandrella, Paris, May 2021