Ch. LEBLANC
Vers 1830
Neo-Gothic architectural motif
Watercolour and gouache, heightened with gold, inlaid in a larger sheet
Sheet: 250 × 323 mm, mounting: 323 × 447 mm
Signed in brush and gouache lower left ch. Leblanc
Provenance: Duchesse de Berry (album amicorum) then, by descent, the family of Count Hector de Lucchesi-Palli
It is probably a drawing in honour of the Duchesse de Berry, as some of the scenes, even if imagined, seem to relate to her life. The troubadour style of the sheet as a whole seems to correspond with the period of her life when she lived with the Duke Lucchesi-Palli, having married him in secret in Rome in 1831, after the 1832 uprising in the Vendée and her subsequent imprisonment in Blaye. In addition, the sculpted figures symbolising Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Poetry (?) evoke her taste for the arts, just as the garlands of flowers recall her love of botany and the well-known way in which she had remodelled the grounds of the château at Rosny-sur-Seine.