Charles Guillaume Brun Wall Decorations

Dimensions with frame : Height : 116 cm (45.7 in.) ; Width : 144 cm (56.7 in.) Dimensions without frame : Height : 85 cm (33.5 in.) ; Width : 118 cm (46.5 in.) Atrium with a rich Pompeian decor in which a young woman lying on a bed is playing with a sparrow, not paying attention to the man sat at her feet. This painting is a major work of art of C. G. Brun, well-know for the precision of his technic, by the elegance of its composition, the pureness of the colors, the refinement of the touch and the expressivity of the characters. This rare intimist scene in a interior decorated in the Pompeian style perfectly illustrates the taste of the time for the discovery of the villas of Pompei, thanks to the archeological excavations of the 18th century and the books published about them. To arrange its interiors based on the models of the Pompeian villas is then a trend that the most important people of that time will follow, as the Prince Napoléon, cousin of the Emperor Napoléon III, who orders the construction of a splendid Pompeian villa on the Avenue Montaigne, of which nothing remains but a few pictures and a painting by Gustave Boulanger, dated 1861 and called Répétition du « Joueur de flûte » et de la « Femme de Diomède » chez le Prince Napoléon. This painting illustrates the poem « Fletus passeris Lesbiae » from the collection « Carmina » written by Catulle (87-54 av. J.-C.) : in his work, the author, in love with Lesbie, a married woman living in Rome, puts on a show a sparrow as the main center of interest of its mistress who neglects her suitor. This theme has been represented many times in painting, like the version by Raphaël Poggi exposed at the Salon of 1865, or Lawrence Alma-Tadema in 1866 or Edward Poynter in 1907. Painting exposed, as reference number 467, at the Salon of 1861 on the picture rail of the Palais des Champs-Elysées Charles Guillaume Brun, born in Montpellier in 1825 and died in Paris in 1908, was registered in 1847 at the Paris Beaux-Arts school, where he studied under the direction of François- Edouard Picot (1786-1868) and of Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889). His participation in the Paris Salon began in 1851 with genre subjects (Young girl doing her morning prayer), but as soon as 1853, he regularly sent Orientalist scenes, located in Algeria (Prayer in 1859, Rendez-vous in Constantine in 1861, Moorish woman...