Charles Jalabert (1818-1901) Portrait Of President Louis-marie De Belleyme Magistrate

Charles François JALABERT
(Nîmes 1818 - Paris 1901)
Portrait of President Louis-Marie de Belleyme (1787-1862)
Oil on cardboard
H. 25 cm; L. 17 cm
Signed lower left - Made around 1856-57

Provenance: By family descent from the model until today.

Related work: Portrait of the President of Belleyme, H. 201 cm; W. 138 cm, Salon of 1857

Charles Jalabert began his training in his native region alongside the Provençal master, Alexandre Colin. His father finding that a commercial career would be more lucrative, decides to send him to Paris, where he will still take the path of the Arts, referred by his employer. At 23, after starting out in Paul Delaroche's studio, Jalabert won the second Prix de Rome, repeating until 1843 in order to obtain the long-awaited travel grant. He does not achieve his ends and leaves at his own expense for the Eternal City. On his return in 1847, the young painter achieved great success, exhibiting at the Salon important works acquired by museums. From the 1860s he was a renowned portrait painter in the Place de Paris and notably produced effigies of the Orleans family. Louis-Marie de Belleyme is the son of the famous geographer of Louis XV, Pierre de Belleyme who worked throughout the south-west of the Kingdom, on the magnification of the Cassini maps, published under the name of “Carte de Guyenne”, but better known. as "Belleyme Card". This family of modest surgeons and notaries from Périgord developed in Paris where the geographer lived. Louis-Marie was born in 1787 and began studying law, which he quickly slaughtered to become a lawyer in 1807, when he was only 20 years old. A great orator, he proved himself as a substitute for the king's prosecutor in Corbeil and went through the posts, climbing the ranks in a few years in the middle of the magistracy of Île de France, to become in 1826, king's prosecutor at the tribunal of the Seine, the most important in France. In 1827, he suffered a political failure in the legislative elections of Périgueux, but obtained in 1828 the post of Prefect of Police of Paris, at the request of the Martignac government. The following year he left his functions to the great regret of the king, and became deputy of the Dordogne. A few weeks after his election to the National Assembly, Belleyme was appointed President of the Civil Court of the Seine, a position in which he remained for 28 years, until his retirement at 70. Belleyme had two sons, both taking the voice of the law. Adolphe, the youngest will also be deputy of the Dordogne from 1852 to his death in 1864. This one had a daughter who married one of the sons of the Duke of Treviso. They also had a daughter who married a prince of Faucigny-Lucinge, in whom the very large portrait for which our tableautin is preparatory failed, as well as a Belleyme marble seated by James Pradier who joined the collections of the Musée d ' Île de France in Sceaux. Our painting was in the descendants of the eldest son of Louis-Marie de Belleyme, accompanied by a very beautiful terracotta representing the profile of the magistrate.