Jean-Baptiste Jacques AUGUSTIN (1759-1832)... - Lot 62 - Osenat

Lot 62
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Result : 8 125EUR
Jean-Baptiste Jacques AUGUSTIN (1759-1832)... - Lot 62 - Osenat
Jean-Baptiste Jacques AUGUSTIN (1759-1832) Self-portrait in front bust. Square miniature on ivory. 7 x 7 cm. Gilded brass hanging frame, chiselled with water leaves. Provenance: Christie's sale, Important miniature portraits and gold boxes, November 27, 2007, lot 165. Related work: Old A.Castan Collection, Sale Pierre Bergé et Associés, 21 December 2009, n°102 Biography: Son of a master glazier, the young Augustin showed his aptitude for drawing from childhood. Noticed by the intendant of the bishop of Saint-Dié, Chalot de Saint-Mart, he probably left to study in Nancy with Jean-Baptiste Claudot and perhaps Jean Girardet. In 1780, after a stay in Dijon with his elder brother Georges Nicolas Toussaint, called Augustin Dubourg, he moved to Paris. He first worked for Gatien Philippon and then managed to build up a large clientele in the fashionable genre: the portrait in miniature. The rendering of the physiognomy and smoothness of his portraits, on which no brushstrokes can be distinguished, make him one of the best specialists of the genre. He is also a master whose teaching is sought after. His pupils included Lizinska de Mirbel, Alexandre De Latour and Fanny Charrin, as well as Barbe Edmée Chardon, born in Vernisy (1761-1832), mother of the future Madame Ancelot. Beginning at the Salon of 1791, he painted nobles as well as bourgeois and revolutionaries. The artist made his fortune and married, on 8 July 1800, one of his students, Pauline Ducruet, 22 years his junior, who also produced works in the style of her husband, including a portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais. In 1806, Jacques Augustin was awarded a gold medal and a sum of 250 francs. His recognition survived the changes of regimes, as in 1814 he became an ordinary painter in the king's cabinet. Decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1821, he was however supplanted by his former pupil, Lizinska de Mirbel. Suffering from gout, treated by his wife, he succumbed in his 73rd year to the second cholera pandemic. He is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (58th division). Many of his works were bought back by his widow when they were auctioned off in 1839, seven years after his death. When she died in 1865, they became the property of the Cornut de la Fontaine de Coincy family, who sold a number of them to the American collector John Pierpont Morgan (our notebook comes from this collector) forty years later. Bibliography: "Jean-Baptiste-Jacques Augustin 1759-1832, Une nouvelle excellence dans l'art du portrait en miniature", Scripta Edizioni, 2015
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