Accession No

6159

Brief Description

framed painting of ‘The Astronomy Lecture’, French, mid 19th Century

Origin

France; Paris

Maker

Class

drawing; astronomy

Earliest Date

1800

Latest Date

1850

Inscription Date

Material

Wood; Paper

Dimensions

Length 232mm; width 185mm; height 28mm (including frame)

Special Collection

Provenance

Purchased from Tesseract, Box 151, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706, on or before 16/08/2007.

Inscription

‘L’Astronome Place Vendome
Paris’ (in pencil, on backing paper on reverse of painting)
‘ENCARDEMENTS EN TOUS GENRES
JOUSSEMET-PAYANT
MENSUISIER
10, RUE ST YON, 10
LA ROCHELLE’ (label on reverse)

Description Notes

Framed painting known as ‘The Astronomy Lecture’, French, mid 19th century.
Goache on card, mounted in a glazed gilt wood frame. Sticker on reverse refers to a framer in La Rochelle, France.
Painting shows a moonlit scene of a grand telescope with elaborate mounting outdoors in a city (preseumably in Place Vendôme, Paris) next to an iron fence with moruary wreaths. On the right is a military guard with boyanet, a lecturer addresses a crowd of city folk, and a delivery man for a baker (still wearing his hat) looks through the telescope whilst dogs investigate the basket of goods he has left on the ground.
The dress is mid-C19 at the latest.
The telescope is somewhat unusual, apparently of large aperture, relatively short focal length, has a significant finder on the left side and a long rod on the right, and may have an altazimuth mount.
Painting is signed at bottom right but the name is undecipherable.

Good/fair condition. Frame is fairly chipped and worn, and has two faint cracks at the bottom left corner. The painting itself has a thin scratch in the top right corner

References

Events