Drawing Signed Jean Louis Demarne (1752-1829): Idyllic Landscape Populated By Shepherds And Shepherdesses.

Jean Louis Demarne (1752—1829), pupil of the history painter Gabriel Biard, illustrated at the request of Emperor Napoleon 1st his interview with Pius VII on November 14, 1804 in the forest of Fontainebleau; work kept at the National Museum of the Château de Fontainebleau. However, it was in the genre scene that he excelled and enjoyed great success in his time. At the end of the 18th century Dutch painting from the 17th-18th centuries was highly prized and it was only natural that it constituted one of the sources of inspiration for Jean Louis Demarne, foremost among which were the pastoral scenes of Paulus Potter. (1625-1654). Nevertheless, with Demarne the picturesque yields to idealization and thereby allows to rise from the particular, the anecdote, to the general and thus to embody the spirit of an era. The idyllic landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses revives the theme of Astrée but further testifies to the enthusiasm for Nature at the end of the 18th century; think of Jean Jacques Rousseau or Hameau de Marie Antoinette à Versailles commissioned in 1782-1783. Demarne's works bear witness to this change in sensitivity and his success was such that he appears in the catalog of the most prestigious museums: the Louvre, the Wallace collection in London, the Royal Museum of Brussels, those of Moscow and Saint- Petersburg.