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Lot 130: Charles Camille Chazal (French, 1825-1875)

Est: $80,000 USD - $120,000 USD
Christie'sNew York, NY, USOctober 25, 2006

Item Overview

Description

Les filles d'Eve
signed and dated 'Cam.Chazal.1867' (lower left)
oil on canvas, a painted lunette
76 x 91 1/4 in. (193 x 231.8 cm.)
Painted in 1867

Artist or Maker

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1867, no. 312.

Notes

THE PROPERTY OF AN AMERICAN COLLECTOR

Camille Chazal was on the brink of real success when he submitted Les Filles d'Eve to the Paris Salon in 1867, and perhaps he hoped that this large and ambitious presentation of the ages-old dilemma of the sexes would be the picture to crown his career. Certainly he was tackling a treacherous subject -- the proper life-role for women had become an especially contentious topic in mid-19th Century France -- and Chazal was careful to veil his imagery in vaguely medieval costume and graceful wit.

Chazal has pictured the choices for women as a straightforward dichotomy, between good motherhood or wicked self-absorption; and lest anyone miss the point of all his accumulated symbols, he inscribed a poetic quatrain at the center of his picture:

La femme, tout d'abord, à sa race perdue;
Par la femme à son tour le mal est racheté.
De la vient qu'à la fois nous avons;
Et de l'amour qui sauve et de l'amour qui tue.

(roughly:
In the beginning, a woman [Eve] brought down mankind,
And then in turn a woman [the Virgin Mary] rescued us.
So from that time on we've all had to choose:
A love to save us, or a love to kill us.)

On the left, a young woman chastely dressed in white has turned from the prayer book she has been reading to welcome her adoring husband. At her feet, she has set aside the distaff and spinning wheel that have been an identifying mark of woman since 'Adam dug and Eve span...' Her virtuous character has been rewarded with a happy child (held in the background before an image of the Virgin and Child by a dutiful handmaiden) and a husband whose success is marked by the medal around his neck. In counterpoint, a second young woman in a negligently draped gown looks bemusedly upon a young man recumbent at her feet (apparently dreaming his life away; he seems too happy to be dead!) while also appraising herself in a mirror behind. An older man tries to catch the young beauty's attention with jeweled gifts, with a draped table holds luscious fruits, wine, a painted mask -- the tools of seduction -- and a statue of Pan, a god of erotic love. Presiding over all as if she were a sculpted figure on a fountain pedestal, but painted with delicate realism, Eve plucks a fruit from a tree.

While Chazal honored all the traditional imagery associated with the good woman and the fallen woman, it should be noted that he painted no downside to the choice of licentiousness, a tacit acknowledgement to a presumed Parisian tolerance for sin cloaked in beauty. Chazal is not well-known today, probably because his most important works are difficult to see in churchs and provincial musueums. But in 1849, he had been the promising runner-up in the prestigious Prix de Rome competition; third class and second class medals at Salons in the 1850s and early 1860s, as well a number of official commissions, placed him among the artists to be watched in the mid-1860s. Just what to make of the Les Filles d'Eve, at a moment when the French art establishment was engaged in what felt like a do-or-die effort to affirm the importance of moralizing history painting, is not clear.

We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for the preparation of this catalogue note.

Auction Details

Orientalist Art, 19th Century European Art

by
Christie's
October 25, 2006, 12:00 AM EST

20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY, 10020, US