Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855)
A noted pupil of Jacques-Louis David and a commander of the Légion d'Honneur, Isabey is best known for the grand commissions he executed for Marie-Antoinette, Napoléon I, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe. However, instead of extolling the official virtues of the French state, these drawings affectionately depict eight figures active at the time of the Salon of 1824. They are fleeting (and often biting) images of the art world in Paris, recorded by an artist who knew it intimately.
Among these figures is Louis François Aubry (1767-1851), who was a student of Isabey, as well as of François Vincent. Another student of the latter artist was Antoine-Baptiste Thomas (1791-1834), who received a medal at the Salon of 1822 and exhibited at the Salon of 1824. Evidently, Isabey had a certain regard for the young painters of those years, as he included a portrait of Adolphe Ignatievitch Ladurner (1796/8- 1856) as well, who in 1830 was summoned to Russia to serve as court painter to Nicolas I. The artist also executed a drawing of his son-in-law, Emile, and his son, Eugène Isabey (1803-1886), who had his début in the Salon of 1824.
Isabey's teasing brush captured a musician in the midst of these painters, as well. The present sketch, inscribed "Mengal", most likely refers to Jean Mengal (1796-1878), who, along with his brother Martin Joseph, was a noted horn player at the Paris Opera. The subjects of the drawings inscribed "Machen" and "Six Pouces" remain unidentified, though the latter figure must have been noted for his height (or lack thereof), as pouce is an archaic French measurement roughly equivalent to an inch.
Though it is not clear whether these contemporaneous drawings were meant as a series, five of them bear the collector's stamp of the Marquis Philippe de Chennevières (1820-1899), the longtime director of the Ecole de Beaux-Arts and organizer of the Salon from 1852-1870. The Marquis has been described by Lugt as one of the most knowledgeable collectors of the nineteenth century, whose collection is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Louvre and at the Musée Jacquemart-André in 1994. That these caricatures were kept in his collection alongside polished drawings by Fragonard, Boucher, and Girodet is a testament both to their quality and to their vivid evocation of Paris in a golden age.
Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855)
