Joseph Hippolyte Lequeutre (1793-1877) Portrait Of A Young Man Dunkirk Miniature

Joseph Hippolyte LEQUEUTRE
(Dunkirk 1793 - Paris 1877)
Portrait of a young man
Gouache and watercolor on vellum
H. 14 cm ; L. 11 cm
Signed and dated on the left November 1833

Exhibition : perhaps Salon of 1834, under number 1263, Miniatures and watercolor

After the first rudiments acquired from his father, teacher and drawing teacher, Lequeutre will be a student of David, Jean-Pierre Granger, and the miniaturist Périn-Salbreux. He will train his finesse with Aubry and especially Jean-Baptiste Isabey, other renowned miniaturists. The young artist first developed compositions in watercolor, print or lithographic pencil, before closing his work on the miniature portrait. From 1824, he exhibited at the Salon his small formats, which were noticed ("A lot of truth and resemblance" writes Adolphe Thiers in his review of the Salon), and this for 40 years. In 1831, he received a 2nd class medal. During this long career, he will befriend many of his contemporaries, including the sculptor Barye (a letter kept at the INHA testifies to this). The orientalist painter Léon Belly (1827-1877), a native of Saint-Omer, was one of his students in the years 1845-48.

Despite an abundant production (at the Salon of 1847, he exhibited 15 miniatures), his works are today rather rare, mainly dated between 1824 and the end of the 1830s. These miniatures mostly represent his friends (including Isabey) , members of his family or reigning families. The Duchess of Berry (with whom he is familiar and whom he is considered to be the last miniaturist; he presents at the Salon of 1849 a portrait dated 1830, considered remarkable by the critics, and which will be exhibited in 1924 at the Albertina de Vienne) and the Duke of Bordeaux, his sister the Duchess of Parma, the Princess of Nassau, Napoleon III, and many other crowned heads have passed under Lequeutre's fine brush, sometimes on several occasions. In 1863, during his last participation in the Salon, he presented, exceptional in his corpus, two hunting subjects in oil (The frightened fox, and The spaniel in arrest). Schidlhof described him as an excellent miniaturist with impeccable design and correct expressions; he emphasized his remarkable treatment of the hair, as well as that of the clothes. Let us point out the record price obtained by a rather late portrait of the Duchess of Berry, then in exile at the castle of Frohsdorf in Austria, at Christie's on November 28, 2012: £ 55,250