Henri PICOU (1824-1895)

Lot 358
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
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Result : 6 200EUR
Henri PICOU (1824-1895)
Resting in the Forest, 1864 Oil on canvas 52 x 63 cm. Localized, signed and dated, lower right: Marlotte Henry Picou 1864 Notes: Picou was one of those endearing and bohemian painters who had taken up residence in the forest of Fontainebleau to gain the freedom they no longer felt in Paris. That rascal Picou", said Delaroche, "you can't get hold of him, he flees like a bird. In Marlotte, he, the history painter and regular visitor to the Salons, stayed in a humble house: "Yes, they put us up for three francs a day (...), these good peasants who have never understood (...) what profits they could make from the rich (...) who, from time to time, come to ask them for a few minutes of real happiness and real freedom". We propose to see in our painting, featuring an elegant company enjoying the shades of the forest of Fontainebleau, the Rest in the Forest, which the artist exhibited at the Salon, in 1865. The work was humorously described by the chronicler Lucien Dubois, in his article Les artistes bretons et vendéens au salon de 1865: Do you like brunettes? Do you like blondes? M. Picou offers you a whole assortment of both, and of the most dazzling kind, my faith, in his Repos en forêt. As for the ugly sex, it would be completely conspicuous by its absence, if it weren't for a lackey who is gallooned on all sides and who is still only there to set the table on the grass and cut up the cold birds. I am very much mistaken or we are catching a flagrant offence of extra-marital picnic. Let us pass discreetly without disturbing these ladies, and especially let us keep well from saying anything to the husbands.
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