Pierre Raymond Jacques Monvoisin

Bio

While earlier painters were fascinated with the glories of ancient Rome and its historic legacy, many nineteenth century artists reflected a complimentary view of Italian contemporary life, particularly the colorful peasantry of the south. Monvoisin has portrayed a young shepherdess standing beside her sleeping lover in a picture that once belonged to King Louis-Philippe. The subject is actually taken from a folk tale, of a bandit who was protected from harm by his lover, a young shepherd girl from Sonnino. This story was popular with both French and English painters of the period, an important example being painted by Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy and founder of the National Gallery (now in a New York collection).

Leopold Robert, the best known of the French painters in Italy, painted several versions of this subject. The first of 1821 is in the Museum in St. Gall, the second of 1822 is now in Dresden, another of the same year is in La Chaux des Fonds and a fourth, of 1823, is in Leipzig. Monvoisin left France a few years later after a dispute with the French artistic establishment, to found major art academies in Chile and Argentina, and his paintings of life in South America are highly sought after. A major neo-classical subject, Telemachus and Euchris, can be seen in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.