Paravey watercolor

HENRIETTE MARIE­–ANNE PARAVEY             Mainz 1813 – 1888 Paris

A Frangipani Flower.

Watercolor on vellum. Signed with the artist’s initials at the lower right. In excellent fresh condition.

Paravey was the daughter of a bourgeois family from Mainz; her father Pierre-François was a merchant with family connections to French civil administrators. Her father became a civil administrator in the Rhine-Moselle Département, and in 1816 the family moved to Paris where Pierre-François became a banker.

Henriette’s upper-middle class family connections may have been the initial impetus for her early training in watercolor and flower images. As her family lived in Meudon, near the house of the famous Pierre-Joseph Redouté (nicknamed the “Raphael of flowers”) her watercolors clearly show his influence.  She was trained in watercolor by Cyane Lecoque De Boisdauran (active 1822-1838), herself a student of Baron Regnault (1754-1829).

By 1851 Paravey produced watercolors for Vegetable Droleries, The Vegetable Empire, the Memoirs of Cucurbitus. Whatever her contributions to this strange, witty publication, it would seem that our Frangipani Flower with its glossy leaves and branch may well have been produced somewhat earlier, as the elegance and delicate movement of the image would seem more in tune with somewhat earlier Neoclassical presentations.

It is noteworthy that our watercolor was executed on vellum, an expensive support material.  The use of this material for such watercolors was standard practice for professional flower painters; this smooth, pearlescent surface displayed the delicate colors and the glowing surfaces of the flower and the accompanying leaves with palpable life. The new interest in botany and botanic gardens in Europe (see here our description of the LeClerc Magnolia Blossom) produced a growth of interest in artistic depiction of flowers and plants as prime cultural artefacts.

While young women especially, often received some training in watercolor, as a polite accomplishment in an otherwise circumscribed social milieu, several female artists during this period, Paravey very much among them, became acknowledged masters.

395 x 314 mm    15 9/16 x 12 3/8 inches