Le Sommeil Des Paysans
Le Sommeil Des Paysans
Le Sommeil Des Paysans
Le Sommeil Des Paysans

Currently not on view

Le Sommeil Des Paysans,

ca. 1808–12

Théodore Géricault, French, 1791–1824
2012-103
Impatient with studio routine, Géricault spent four years teaching himself by copying paintings in the Musée Napoléon—the Musée du Louvre, at the time augmented with art looted across Europe—and in other collections. He copied many known works, especially by Venetian artists, but the original he copied here has eluded identification. It might have been by Jacopo Bassano (1510–1592), an artist renowned for landscapes and genre scenes. Among the suggested subjects are Sleeping Apostles and The Parable of the Tares (in Jesus’s parable, a farmer’s enemy sows tares, a weed, among wheat seeds while the farmer sleeps, but the wheat will be harvested and the tares destroyed—a metaphor for the Last Judgment). Lacking an instructor and with a love of experimentation, Géricault used colors containing bitumen, an innovation of the time that produced rich autumnal effects when fresh but darkened to a tar-like color with age.

Information

Title
Le Sommeil Des Paysans
Dates

ca. 1808–12

Maker
Théodore Géricault
Medium
Oil on wood panel
Dimensions
77.5 x 57.1 cm (30 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.) frame: 97 × 78 × 6.5 cm (38 3/16 × 30 11/16 × 2 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Sean Avram Carpenter, Class of 2003, Lauren Sarah Carpenter, Class of 2006, David Aaron Carpenter, Class of 2008, and Grace D. Carpenter
Object Number
2012-103
Culture
French
Type
oil paintings, paintings
Materials
oil paint, panel (wood)
Subject
landscapes (environments), figures (representations), peasants, trees, steeples, sleeping, inhabited places

[Possibly, Parmentier (commissaire-priseur), Paris, Notice de tableaux, esquisses, dessins, études diverses, estampes, livres à figures, etc., appartenant à la succession de feu Géricault, peintre d'histoire, [...] en la salle vitrée de l'Hôtel de Bullion, rue J.-J. Rousseau, no 3, November 3, 1824, part of lot 20 or lot 23 (as Copies faites d'après différents maîtres)]. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1963); [sold, Catalogue de la vente qui aura lieu par suite du décès de Eugène Delacroix, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 22-27, 1864, lot 228 (as Le Sommeil des Apôtres, d'après le Titien)]; possibly acquired at the above sale by “Isambert” [1]; Boittelle; [sale of the above, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, January 10-11, 1867, lot 90 (as Les Apôtres au Jardin des Oliviers). Dr. Émile Isambert (1827-1876); [sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 9, 1877, lot 36 (as Parabole du Diable semant l'ivraie pendant le sommeil des travailleurs)]; [Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 5, 1912, lot 12 (as Parabole du Diable semant l'ivraie pendant le sommeil des travailleurs)]. Mme. Alice Pierrotet Javal, Paris; confiscated from the above as a result of Nazi persecution, September 14, 1942 (ERR reference Pierro 4); restituted February 21, 1947. André Dunoyer de Segonzac (1884-1974), Paris. Private Collection, Paris. [Sotheby's, London, June 23, 1981, lot 9, illustrated (as Le Sommeil des Paysans)]; [acquired at the above sale by Richard Feigen, New York]. [Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York, by 1987]. [Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York by 1997]. Private Collection, Taos, New Mexico, by 2005; [Christie's, New York, April 19, 2005, lot 177, illustrated]. [Sotheby’s, New York, November 4, 2011, lot 79]. Collection of Sean Avram Carpenter, Lauren Sarah Carpenter, David Aaron Carpenter and Grace D. Carpenter; gift of the above to the Princeton University Art Museum, 2012.

[1] according to Sotheby’s 2011 cataloguing, as per their discovery of an inscription in the referenced catalogue held by la Bibliothèque centrale des musées nationaux, Paris.

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