Florent Fidèle Constant Bourgeois
Guiscard 1767 – Passy 1841
Hunters in landscape with the Aqueduct of the village of Buc near Versailles
Gray and brown ink and wash.
427 x 599 mm – 16 13/16 x 23 9/16 in.
Signed Ct Bourgeois and dated 1808 bottom left.
Florent Fidèle Constant Bourgeois, also known as « commander Bourgeois » or « Bourgeois du Castelet », was born in Guiscard (Picardy, currently in Oise) on June 5, 1767 and died in Passy on June 26, 1841, was a French painter, lithographer, designer and engraver. Coming from a family of goldsmiths, Constant Bourgeois was the son of Pierre Bourgeois, notary and receiver general of the marquisate of Guiscard. During the Revolution, Constant Bourgeois served as a volunteer in the 4th Battalion of the Haute-Garonne. Later he left the army to devote himself to painting. A student of the famous painter Jacques-Louis David, Bourgeois became a painter of history and especially landscapes. He was particularly fond of landscape painting, and from his time in Italy sent many views on display to the Salon from 1791. His washes, precise and luminous, were treated directly with a brush, without line contours. His views from Italy, France and Switzerland were particularly appreciated. Under the Consulate, Vivant Denon entrusted him with the task of drawing scenes from Bonaparte’s campaigns. Bourgeois thus exhibited six panoramic drawings at the salon of 1800, notably depicting Toulon in 1798 and the departure of the expedition from Egypt. He received many official commissions, painting for the Grand Trianon and Fontainebleau Castle and was exhibited for over thirty years in salons during the Empire and Restoration. He composed works he illustrated with his lithographs, such as the Collection of picturesque views and factories of Italy in 1805 and subsequent years, the Collection of picturesque views of France, the Picturesque trip to the Grande Chartreuse in 1821. He also illustrated the Description of the new gardens of France and its old castles by Alexander Laborde.
Our drawing was perhaps intended to illustrate a collection of picturesque views because we know of a lithograph, dated 1818, which represents the Buc Village Aqueduct Vue. Dept. of Seine and Oise (Ill.1) and which belongs to the Collection of Picturesque Views of France, edited and printed by Delpech, Paris between 1818 and 1820, comprising eighty lithographs. One drawing[1] (Ill.2) kept at the municipal museum of La Roche-sur-Yon (inv. 912.4.21), takes up the same landscape with an identical point of view but without the presence of the hunters who are in the foreground on our sheet. Unsigned, it is currently attributed to the artist Nicolas Antoine Taunay (Paris, 1755-1830) but could be compared to the work of Constant Bourgeois and constituted a first study for this view of the Aqueduct of Buc.
[1] Brush, brown ink, brown wash on lead lead lead. H. 27.7 cm; L. 43.6 cm
Condition report: Nice condition. Framed by an Empire period frame.
