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A painter best-known for peasant genre scenes rendered in a Neoclassical style, Émile-Auguste Hublin was born and raised in Angers, the historic capital of the northwestern French province of Anjou. In the late 1840s or early 1850s, he moved to Paris, where he trained with François-Édouard Picot, a student of Jacques-Louis David who also taught Alexandre Cabanel, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Isidore Pils. The influence of neoclassicism is clearly evident in Hublin’s oeuvre, harkening back to the sculptural forms of Jacques-Louis David more thoroughly than most of his contemporaries. Although Fillette à l’oiseau depicts a conventional genre scene of a young woman with her pet bird, the artist’s composition is grounded in the late portraiture of David. The opaque and darkened background creates a flat plane which concentrates the viewer’s eye on the idealized rendition of the young girl and this subdued color palette further focuses attention on the interaction between the young girl and her pet, which has settled on her arm. This style of painting became the artist’s hallmark; the figures of his young women are fully three-dimensional in form, and the costumes are more akin to the worn and more ragged clothing of Courbet’s Stonebreakers than the prettified peasant garb of Jules Breton and William Bouguereau. Hublin’s work is thus an unusual blend of neoclassicism, mid-century realism and academic tradition.
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Condition report
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The surface is stable. The canvas has been glue relined. There is scuffing to the extreme edges due to frame abrasion. Under UV light inspection, There is retouching at the extreme edges. In the figure there are a few spots on inpainting including one in her right eyebrow, proper left thumb and one in the background in front of her eyes. In the left hand there is retouching to address a linear repair starting in the forefinger, coming down in a line abotu four inches, then coming across the chest. Adjoining retouching extends three inches in a line horizontal from the proper left fingers to the right. There is an area of retouching in the drape of the proper left sleeve about two inches by three inches and in the right elbow about two inches by four inches. There is a twelve inch line of retouching through her right fingers to the cabinet then extending down in to an area of retouching in the bouquet about three inches square. There is retouching adjacent the bouquet in the apron including a four inch line. There is retouching in the background including the left corner along the left edge, a small area about six inches up from the right corner and fine inch line and spots near the upper left corner.
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Lot 22Sale 20675
Fillette à l'oiseauÉMILE-AUGUSTE HUBLIN (FRENCH, 1830-1891)Estimate: USD 50,000 - 70,000
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