Charles Paul Landon

Lot description

Charles Paul Landon Nonant-le-Pin 1760 - 1826 Paris an interior with a mother and child signed and dated lower centre: Landon 1796, inscribed on an open book lower right: CHARMES/DE/L'ENFANCE./par Jauffret. and extensively inscribed upper right, oil on panel 46 by 37.5 cm.; 18 by 14 3/4 in. This charming domestic interior is almost certainly identifiable with Landon's painting exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1796, the same year as which the picture is dated, described in the Salon catalogue as 'Le Bonheur d'une mere'. The happiness of the mother is celebrated in the words inscribed in the upper right of the picture: Dans les regards naissans, j'ai ***/trouver deja/Des mes loins les plus chers la douce/recempense:/Au declin de mes ans, sans Haute/il me rendra/Tous ceux que mon amour prodigue/a son enfanse. In the same year the fifth edition of L.F. Jauffret's two volume book Les charmes des enfance et les plaisirs de l'amour maternel, was published in Paris, a copy of which is depicted in the lower right of the present composition. Provenance: In the possession of the artist in 1796 (according to the 1796 Salon catalogue); Sir William Wiveleslie Abney, K.C.B., Measham Hall, Derbyshire by 1927; His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 20 June 1927, lot 115, for £48.6s. to Leger. Exhibited: Paris, Musee du Louvre, Salon, 1796, cat. no. 239, as 'Le Bonheur d'une mere'. Literature: E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres..., Paris 1976, vol. iv, p.419; H.W. Janson, Catalogues of the Paris Salon, 1673 - 1881, Paris Salons de 1796, 1797, New York & London 1977, p. 49, no. 239.