Lot 158: JEAN MICHELIN

PROPERTY FROM THE GUSTAV RAU COLLECTION SOLD TO BENEFIT THE GERMAN COMMITTEE FOR UNICEF LANGRES 1623 - 1695 JERSEY A STREET SCENE WITH A POULTRY SELLER AND HIS FAMILY oil on canvas 79.5 by 107 cm.; 31 1/4 by 42 1/8 in.

New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Vouet to Rigaud, 1967, no. 39; Remagen, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Superfranzösisch Kunstkammer Rau, 16 September 2010 – 27 February 2012.

P. Jamot, 'Autour des Le Nain: un disciple Inconnu: Jean Michelin', in Revue de l'Art, 1933, vol. LXIII, p. 216, no. 3, reproduced p. 212; Possibly J. Thuillier, ‘Jean Michelin’, in Les Frères Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1978, pp. 343, under no. 82 (with incorrect measurements and as dated 1652); O. Kornhoff, Superfranzösisch Kunstkammer Rau, exhibition catalogue, Cologne 2010, pp. 34, 96, reproduced.

Art market, Paris, 1923-1925; Van den Kerchove collection, Holland; Comtesse de Pethéon; With Knoedler & Cie.; Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 8 December 1972, lot 88, for 9,500 Guineas to T. Rogers & Co; Bequeathed by Dr. Rau to the Foundation of the German Committee for UNICEF.

The cleaning of the Metropolitan Museum’s purchase of a Louis Le Nain in 1927 revealed a date, 1656, and a signature which Paul Jamot recognised as J. Michelin.1 Prior to this date the only evidence of Michelin’s existence was a mention of his surname as a painter of bambocciate subjects in the 1693-5 memoirs of a certain Louis-Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne. Loménie was recalling his youth in Paris as Secrétaire d’Etat between 1655-63: Bourdon et Michelin, le faiseur de bamboches, qu’il vendait à la foire pour des tableaux de Le Nain, étoient deux dangereux copistes, des fourbes achieves en fait de copies…2 We learn thus that Michelin sold his pictures at fairs passing them off as works by the Le Nain brothers. By 1933 Jamot had grouped together an oeuvre of six paintings by Michelin, including the present lot, centered around the signed Metropolitan picture. Today his known oeuvre consists of at least twenty paintings. Each of Michelin’s street scenes is characterised by an intense réalisme that depicts the true undercarriage of Parisian society. They are as characteristic and descriptive as any such contemporary or future painterly or literary example of this most favoured artistic idiom, the Parisian underclass, a genre that reached its zenith two centuries later in the novels of Emile Zola. Each such work by Michelin follows the same compositional principle: a frieze-like arrangement of family members sit and stand with a raft of accessories before a timbered building. They resemble stage-sets, with the participants seemingly posing for the artist, an arrangement that allowed for Michelin’s characterful portrayal of young, old, male and female and, particularly, of the bedraggled and ill-fitting rags that his protagonists wear. They are all painted in the same somewhat monochromatic and subdued tones, akin to those of the Le Nain but certainly with a mood of their own. This painting, like the Baker’s cart in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Poultry seller in the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, was undoubtedly painted in the 1650s.3 1. See J. Thuillier, ‘Jean Michelin’, in Les Frères Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1978, pp. 341-2, cat. no. 82, reproduced. 2. Ibid., p. 339. 3. For the Raleigh picture see Ibid., pp. 342-3, cat. no. 83, reproduced.