Lot 111: Theodore Caruelle d'Aligny

Theodore Caruelle d'Aligny
French, 1798-1871
homere et les bergers
signed with monogram l.l.
oil on canvas
78 by 68.5 cm., 30 3/4 by 27 in.
Painted circa 1840.
Provenance:
Sale: Paris, Hotel Drouot, Vente Caruelle d'Aligny, 4 May 1874, lot 9
Etex collection
Sale: London, Christie's, 30 June 1978, lot 303, illustrated
Sale: London, Sotheby's, 26 November 1980, lot 23, illustrated
Exhibited:
Cleveland, Museum of Art, on loan
Literature:
Marie-Madeleine Aubrun, Theodore Caruelle d'Aligny, Paris 1988, no.88,
p.108, illustrated (as location unknown)
Fronia E. Wissman, Corot's Salon Paintings: Sources from French Classicism to Contemporary Theater Design, Ph.D. thesis, Newhaven 1989, vol.I, pp.103 & 104
Paris, Grand Palais; Ottawa, Musee des Beaux-Arts & New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corot, exh. cat., Paris 1996, p.266
During his stay in Rome from 1822 to 1827 d'Aligny worked closely with Corot, his naturalistic studies of the campagna exerting an important influence on the older artist. D'Aligny's pioneering conception of landscape as an
organisation of forms and mass underpinned much of the genre's subsequent development up to, and
including, the work of Cezanne. In 1828, he became one of the first landscapists to frequent the Forest of Fontainebleau.
Fronia Wissman dates Homere et les bergeres to around 1840, which would make it a key source for Corot's 1845 treatment of the theme, particularly in its figural grouping (Saint-Lo, Musee des Beaux-Arts). As Michael Pantazzi has noted, this seems to be the only deliberate imitation of a contemporary in Corot's oeuvre, and signals the regard in which he held d'Aligny (see Paris; Ottawa & New York 1996, p. 266).