Charles Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900) - Children's Games, Circa 1890

Charles Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900)
Children's Games, circa 1890
Pastel
26 x 35.5 cm
46.5 x 54.5 cm with its frame
Signed lower right

Charles-Emmanuel Serret (1824-1900) is an artist French painter, renowned for his drawings, pastels and lithographs representing the world of childhood, close to the impressionist movement.

Son of a notary from Aubenas, Charles is the second son of a family of eleven children. The first, Philippe, was a journalist at L'Univers and died in October 1890 in Versailles. The third, Paul (1827-1898), was a mathematician. Charles is a student of Hippolyte Flandrin, Louis Lamothe and Pierre-Charles Comte. He exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon in 1861, two painted portraits of young girls signed “C. Serret”. In 1863, he was one of the artists at the Salon des Refusés. Regularly exhibiting paintings representing genre scenes relating to childhood, he changed medium in 1882, presenting a series of lithographs at the Salon of French Artists; perhaps this is a project for an album, Little Girls and Babies of France. The following year, he exhibited series of pastels, a technique that he developed until 1892, the date of his last salon, this time with the Société nationale des beaux-arts. In 1888, he exhibited at Durand-Ruel, praised by Hugues Le Roux, and experienced his first real success. The Salon of 1889 awarded him a medal and he became a member of the Society of French Painters-Engravers. The 1890s seemed to be the decade of recognition for Serret. The dealer Ambroise Vollard took it into his gallery. The critic Étienne Moreau-Nélaton collected it, and it was admired by Léon Roger-Milès, Octave Mirbeau and Arsène Alexandre. Died in January 1900 in a retirement home located in Neuilly-sur-Seine, he was, posthumously, in 1907, among the works of the Moreau-Nélaton collection exhibited at the Louvre museum during the donation made by the latter to the institution. In 1913, his children's pastels were among the French drawings exhibited at the Armory Show.