Pair Of Fixed Under Glass With Picturesque Views Forming Pendant. Circa 1850.

French School of the 19th century.-Beautiful pair of gouaches enhanced with burgau fixed on oval-shaped coasters with picturesque views, for one, of a port scene and, for the other, of a pendant alpine landscape. Animated by isolated or grouped characters and animals, each carefully researched tableau presents a homogeneous and harmonious composition punctuated by architectural motifs, punctuated by iconographic details evocative of the places and sites represented. Unsigned.
These fixed under glass are set with their original molded frame in stuccoed and gilded wood with a motif of heart-shaped friezes, cord, twisted foliage ribbon decorated with pretty floral garlands.
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Nourished by travel memories or more likely sites illustrated in the Guides, scholarly works in vogue during the Romantic era (including the famous Picturesque and Romantic Journeys in Ancient France, by Baron Taylor, Charles Nodier and A.de Cailleux , 1820-1878), our beautiful pair of gouache works transpose, through the delicate and patient technique of Fixed under glass, its dreamlike charms.
Differed with shimmering bistre tones iridescent with shards and pieces of mother-of-pearl (burgau), brightened with deep greens fringed with yellows or even brightened up with touches of bright colors, these two compositions are each enveloped in a soft bluish luminosity radiating from a sky lit by the lunar star. The latter lavishes dreaminess and enchantment on these picturesque views evoking, for one, a port (or seaside) site and, for the other, a mountainous site - two places popular since the 1830s by the society of the time. appropriating the pleasures of the resort.
Thus, against a luminous background, coasts and cliffs hemmed with foam, snow-capped peaks, mountain heights, forests, valleys and streams of greenery emerge in turn. In this maritime or rock-hewn environment, "typical" architectural constructions emerge: a village with its belfry, a shipowner's bourgeois building with steps and porch, ancestral ruins of a crenellated tower with its ribbed windows, a chalet. Deliciously anedoctic, details contribute to the atmosphere of the place: sailboats offshore, fishing boats docking or moored, wooden bridge above a waterfall, etc. All animated by small characters going about their daily activities: fisherman, boatman, group of notables, drover, washerwoman except a man in a frock coat topped with a top hat (traveler, artist, vacationer in love with the unusual)....
Meticulously composed, this pair of Fixed under glass with a fluid and scholarly workmanship constitutes, beyond their certain decorative character, a pictorial ensemble of undeniable interest both from the technical point of view and from their anchoring in sensitivity and imagination of an era.
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French School of the 19th century. Quality work from the beginning of the second half of the 19th century from the Louis-Philippe/Early Second Empire period. Circa 1850.
Dimensions: With frame: H.: 51 cm;-L.: 58 cm; -Outside frame: H.: 37 cm;-L.: 45 cm.
Materials: gouache; burgau (mother-of-pearl), fortified cardboard and curved glass; stuccoed and gilded wood.
Beautiful condition. No accidents, wetness or air bubbles. Note: missing menus at the internal or external border of the frame.

In the tradition of the elaborate architectural fantasies of the early
ingeniously in perspective some popular ones
watchtowers, its high windows, its Gothic porch, silhouetted against a luminous background. Very finely executed, these constructions fit into an urban environment of Troubadour inspiration. Deliciously anecdotal, small dressed characters go about their domestic activities, a fountain, a body of water, flows of greenery enliven this particularly unusual composition
By its evocative power, it constitutes more prosaically and before the time an invitation to these Visits to Paris Unusual
favorite theme and iconography: “picturesque” views of sites steeped in history. Transposed, these small pieces will constitute a search with patience and care which very pleasantly enliven this set of real interest.