Set Of 4 Botanical Watercolors By Eugénie Grisard Du Saulget, Wife Of The Painter Auguste Desprez

Lot of 4 botanical watercolors from the period 1820-1840 representing according to the legends a Chandleri, a Pomponia and a Japonica flore simplici albo.
Painted on paper, they are generally in good condition and have not been damaged by UV rays, the japonica watercolor has scattered foxing around the edge and the pomponia no longer has glass.
These botanical watercolors are signed Eugénie Grisard du Saulget who probably married in 1836 to the painter Auguste Desprez de Gesincourt*.
The smallest measures 26cm x 27cm and the largest 36cm x 28cm in total. Delivery possible by chronopost for:
France 40€
Europe 70€
Others 90€
*Auguste Desprez was born on February 21, 1791, probably in Amance in Haute-Saône.
He was an Inspector of Direct Contributions.
He died at the age of fifty.
He is the son of François Joseph, an officer in the Savoy Carignan regiment, and Catherine de Lalle.
The latter purchased the seigneurial property of Gésincourt in Haute-Saône in 1779, a surname that his descendants would conceal during the Revolution, only to use it again from 1861. According to Pierre Miquel's classification, Auguste Desprez would be a "reformer," an age group of painters born between 1775 and 1796 who would form the transition between the neo-classicists - the PH tendency of Valenciennes with ideally Italianate and idyllic landscapes - and the nascent romantics.
One of the specificities of the "reformers" was to draw or paint nature on the motif.
This was particularly true in Dauphiné, Savoy, and the high mountains.
The landscape works of Auguste Desprez that we have been able to identify to date are inspired by the neo-classicism of the works of JV Bertin, AE Michallon or JX Bidauld.
The genre scenes that Auguste Desprez painted prefigure the romantic and then realist trend to come.
The animal character of certain works announces the nascent success of this genre around 1840.
The studies from nature were executed mainly in Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Brittany (where one of his brothers lived), the Rhineland and Switzerland. Whether in the paintings, watercolors, sepias or in the thousands of sketches from nature that he executed, a very meticulous line emerges, a very detailed drawing of an almost photographic precision where the perspective is totally mastered.
The art of the miniature character and the representation on a very small scale of objects, animals, trees or buildings characterizes his graphics.
We can consider that in many aspects Auguste Desprez would be among the precursors of the main movements which would dominate painting in France towards the middle of the 19th century.
Auguste Desprez exhibited at the Salon in 1834, 1835 and 1836; it is not known if sales or commissions followed these exhibitions.
He died in 1842 in Ligny en Barrois (55). Site dedicated to Auguste Desprez: augustedesprez.com