Lot 107: Louis Aubert , active in France 1740 - 1780 The Misbehaved Student; The Disciplined Student a pair, both oil on canvas

a pair, both oil on canvas Quantity: 2

measurements note each: 16 1/8 by 13 in.; 41 by 33 cm.

When juxtaposed with one another these paintings make an amusing and didactic pair. In the first, a little school boy holding a pistolet à vent (air pistol) plays le jeu de la cannonière (the cannon game). Gazing upwards he has cast his books to the side, and, as the crumpled paper next to him suggests, he is going to use the books' pages not for learning, but as ammunition to launch into the air with his toy. In the second picture, the young boy has chosen learning over play. His books are still neatly tied with string, and he breaks his pistolet.

The present pair relates to a genre of painting in 18th century France which depict young children in bust length or half length formats of like sizes. First popularized by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, the genre was continued by artists such as Louis Aubert and Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, to whom the present pair has in the past been attributed. Lépicié, in fact, depicted boys playing the "cannon game" on quite a few occasions. For example, in their exhibition, l'Enfance, that opened on June, 10, 1949, Galerie Charpentier featured a painting by Lépicié of a boy holding a pistolet à vent at his side, and P. Gaston-Dreyfus and F. Ingersoll-Smouse, in their monograph on Lépicié, list a painting titled Le jeu de la cannonière (cat. no. 251).