Lot 83: Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry (Bar-sur-Aube 1823-1893 Paris)

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry (Bar-sur-Aube 1823-1893 Paris)
Study for a female allegorical figure
inscribed 'Ministre des Finances'
black and white chalk, squared in red chalk, on blue paper
8¼ x 10¼ in. (210 x 216 mm.)

A study for a figure in the lower left of a ceiling painting, commissioned in 1860, originally for the antechamber of the Ministry of Finance when it was located in the Louvre (Inv. 20855; Paris, Louvre). In the painting the woman's bust and left arm are obscured by another figure placed in front of her. The subject of the painting, exhibited at the Salon of 1863 (no. 169), has not been identified.
Biennourry, the 1842 winner of the Prix de Rome, was a favored painter at the court of Napoleon III and executed many large-scale decorative cycles for the Tuileries, the Louvre and various churches in Paris.