JEAN ALAUX (178s-r864)

A native of Bordeaux, where he received his initial training, jean Alaux entered the studio of Franfois-Andre Vincent (1746-1816) in Paris in 1807; later he studied with Pierre-Narcisse Guffin (1774-1833). He won the Prix de Rome in 1815, which enabled him to spend the years 1816-20 as a pensionnaire of the Academie de France at the Villa Medici (where he befriended Ingres, who made two portraits of him); he remained in Italy for the most part until1824. Although he was attracted to the genre of landscape, producing portfolios of lithographs and contributing to Baron Taylor's Voyages pittoresques (a survey of old French monuments, customs, and folklore published in twentyfour volumes between 1820 and 1878 ), Alaux became better known for his historical and allegorical scenes. Achieving official success at the Salon of 1824, he subsequently executed numerous commissions for the Louvre, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. Louis-Philippe (r. 1830-48) named him court painter, and he served as director of the academy in

Rome from 1847 to 1852. GT I AEM

91. Louis-Vincent-Leon Palliere in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome Fig. 1. Jean Alaux, Picot in His Studio at the Villa Medici, 1817. Oil Oil on paper, laid on canvas, 22%x 17% in. (57.8 x 45.1 em) on canvas, 19 /s x 14 in. (50.5 x 35.5 em). Private collection, France Signed and dated at lower left: J. alaux I Roma I 1817.

PROVENANCE Presumably Leon Palliere, Rome (until d. 1820); his widow, nee Franc;oise­ Virginie Liegois, later Mmejean Alaux, from 1827 (1820- her d. 188o); sale, Like his friend and fellow Prix de Rome-winner Ingres, Jean Alaux Sotheby's, New York, january 24, 2002, lot 91, for $511,750, to Hazlitt; [Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 2002; sold to Wrightsman]; Mrs. Charles made numerous portraits of his colleagues during his stint as a Wrightsman, New York (from 2002). pensionnaire at the Villa Medici in the years rSrs to r82o. Three of Alaux's portraits are especially distinctive in that they show the LITERATURE young artists in their quarters, with all the appurtenances of their Sotheby's, Paris, sale cat., June 27, 2002, under lot 119; Olivier Bonfait, ed., Maesta di Rom.a, da Napoleone all'unita d'Italia, d'Ingres a Degas: Les artistes evocatively bohemian lives; this format would quickly be fol­ .franfais a Rome, exh. cat., Academie de France, Rome (Rome and Milan, 2003), lowed by his friend Cogniet (see below) and by later residents of pp. 219, fig. 50a, 372 under no. 51,415-16 n. 2 under no. 50,523 under no. 134; Chiara Stefani, in Andre Cariou et al., "La nature l'avait cree peintre": Pierre­ the Villa Medici, such as Horace Vernet (see p. 326). The Henri de Valenciennes, 1750-1819, exh. cat., Musee Paul-Dupuy, Toulouse (Paris, Wrightsman painting shows Louis-Vincent-Leon Palliere (r787- 2003), pp. 211-13, fig. 4 (color), 217 n. 43; Thomas LeClaire Kunsthandel, r82o; Prix de Rome, r812) playing a guitar in his bedroom. A Master Drawings, Recent Acquisitions: A Review of the Years 1982-2002 (Hamburg, 2003), caption to fig. 5 under no. 27 (another painting erroneously ill.). slightly smaller portrait in a French private collection shows

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