Alexandre-Joseph Desenne
Paris 1785 – 1825
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- Saint Phar embracing Aline
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, framing lines with black pencil. Inscribed with pencil Aline.
Sheet 222 x 164 mm – 8 3/4 x 6 7/16 in.
Drawing 112 x 81 mm – 4 7/16 x 3 3/16 in.
Sold with the print « before inscription »
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- Saint Phar and Aline embracing
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, framing lines with black pencil. Inscribed with pencil Aline auprès de son village troqua dans un vallon charmant son innocence et son Laitage contre un joli petit enfant / Aline épitre
Sheet 222 x 164 mm – 8 3/4 x 6 7/16 in.
Drawing 112 x 81 mm – 4 7/16 x 3 3/16 in.
With the engraving by S. Derby.
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- Saint Phar and Aline embracing
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, framing lines with black pencil. Inscribed with pencil Une puissance plus forte que moi m’empecha de la relever et m’entraina dans sa chute / Aline nouvelle.
With the engraving by Blanchard, which is reproduced in Œuvres complètes de Boufflers, tome I, Paris, Furne libraire, 1827, p. 6.
Sheet 222 x 164 mm – 8 3/4 x 6 7/16 in.
Drawing 112 x 81 mm – 4 7/16 x 3 3/16 in.
PROVENANCE
Noël-François-Henri Huchet, comte de la Bédoyère.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Catalogue des livres rares et précieux imprimés et manuscrits, dessins et vignettes, composant la bibliothèque de feu M. le comte de la Bédoyère, Paris, L. Potier libraire, 1862, n° 298 : « trois dessins à la sépia, in-8, par Desenne, pour le conte d’Aline, par Boufflers, sur pap. vél. in-4. » (three sepia drawings, in-8, by Desenne, for the tale of Aline by Boufflers, on wove paper in-4.)
These three vignettes are preparatory projects for the illustration of Aline, reine de Golconde, a tale written in 1761 by Stanislas de Boufflers, adapted for the stage by Jean-Michel Sedaine by 1766, and many other times in Paris (by Berton), Stockholm, Copenhagen, Genoa (by Donizetti), Saint-Petersburg (by François Boeldieu). These drawings illustrate the beginning of the tale: during a hunting trip, the young narrator gets infatuated with a pretty peasant girl, Aline, who is carrying a milk jar. “Aline wanted to defend herself from my caresses and in her efforts, her jar fell et her milk spilled all over the pathway; she began to cry and, as she briskly pulled away from my arms, her foot slept on the moist grass and she fell over; I flew to her rescue but a powerful force prevented me from helping her to her feet, dragging me down instead; I was fifteen, Aline fourteen. It was at this age and in this place that we first learned to love.”
Son of a bookseller, Alexandre Joseph Desenne was a self-taught draughtsman who specialized in books illustration. The author of numerous vignettes for Voltaire, Rousseau Molière, Boileau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Walter-Scott, Lamartine, Cervantes, Chateaubriand, Camoëns, he was also a painter.
The Comte de la Bédoyère owned not only these three drawings but also many of Desenne’s drawn vignettes, notably the ones preparing the illustrations of Lettres à Émilie (Demoustier, 1792), Manon Lescault (Abbé Prévost, 1818 edition) and Les Oeuvres de Molière (Paris 1822). He also possessed a great number of Desenne’s engraved vignettes for various books.
