Un soldat vu de dos à Cherbourg
MONNIER, Henry

Un soldat vu de dos à Cherbourg

1838
Size : 29.5 x 20 cm
Condition : B+
Technique : pen, pencil and watercolors on paper
Reference : 571-218
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Description

Henry Monnier, A soldier seen from behind in Cherbourg, March 1838, pen, pencil and watercolors on paper, 29.5 x 20 cm, handwritten annotation in the lower right corner: "Cherbourg mars 1838" and stamp of the sale Henry Monnier in the lower left corner. Small stains and holes.

Bibliography: unpublished.

Henry Monnier devoted himself to painting and literature while pursuing a career as an actor. He started in the studio of the painter Gros and frequented the bourgeois salons of the Restoration. He was the creator of Joseph Prudhomme, an episodic character in La Famille improvisée - the first success of Henry Monnier, playwright - (Théâtre des Variétés, 1831) and the hero of Grandeur et décadence de Joseph Prudhomme (Odéon 1852). A great lover of theater and a member of singing societies like his creator, Mr. Prudhomme became the type of the bourgeois 1830, solemn and pompous, sententious and declamatory, who gets lost in his metaphors. His graphic work is abundant with, before 1830, many suites of lithographs in pen and color, including Les Grisettes, Mœurs administratives, Galerie théâtrale, Paris vivant. He also provided vignettes to illustrate Balzac, Eugène Sue, Béranger's songs, Le Diable à Paris, Les Français peints par eux-mêmes; and also collaborated in several popular magazines, La Caricature, l'Almanach charivarique, Le Voleur, etc.

Henry Monnier served as a model for Balzac for the character of Jean-Jacques Bixiou in his novel Les Employés ou la Femme supérieure (1838), a civil servant, caricaturist, man of good words, who appears in many novels of La Comédie humaine. This unpublished sheet dates from the same year, it was made in March in Cherbourg. The presence of the stamp "Sale Henry Monnier" suggests that this study was part of the artist's studio collection. Seen from behind, a soldier looks out over the deserted shoreline, probably musing. Henry Monnier is a talented draftsman who depicts his model in a slight contrapposto. He is also a fine colorist using a subtle range of blue and white. This composition leaves a lot of room for mystery, who is this soldier? What is he looking at?

MONNIER, Henry