Philippe Parrot (1831-1894) Portrait Of Yvonne Mattoy Périgord Dordogne

Philippe PARROT
(Saint Martin d'Excideuil 1831 – Paris 1894)
Portrait of Yvonne Mattoy
Oil on canvas
H. 46 cm; L. 38 cm
Signed and dedicated at the top right “to Miss Yvonne Mattoy – very affectionately” 1888

Born in the charming and dynamic town of Excideuil, Philippe Parrot studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand with his older brother (future pediatrics). At the age of twenty, he returned to his Périgord lands to enjoy life and the opportunities that the countryside offered to young people from good families. After a few years of idleness, he decided to return to Paris to immerse himself in the attractions of the capital. His high school friends that he meets again tell him about his first drawing prizes, which he won with flying colors. A penniless student, he decided to enter the Swiss Academy, very affordable for the time, where students corrected each other, without a higher authority. Philippe Parrot spent ten years in the ranks of this small Academy which saw Corot, Courbet, Manet, Monet and so on.

From 1861 he exhibited his first large nudes at the Salon, with such elegant poses. In 1867 he traveled to Italy with Paul Dubois, one of his classmates from Louis-le-Grand, also a painter, and brought back a new look at painting, and his painting. From that moment on, he brought new colors, new thinking which led him to medals at the Salon in 1868, 1870 and 1872. Often compared to Jean-Jacques Henner in his compositions, the criticism was positive for him and did not push this comparison with the master of light in the wrong way.

Yvonne Mattoy, a young woman who has remained anonymous, was painted in 1888 by Parrot around the age of 30, dressed and wearing black hair, brushed on an ocher background with large touches, of which some of the artist's retouches escape, notably in the hat position. This long-nosed profile is of great elegance that the tones chosen for the background and the clothing reveal by contrast. Is our young woman a Périgord, an expatriate from Périgord to Paris or simply a Parisian friend that Philippe Parrot illustrates?