Code: 10087
Dimensions:
GABRIEL DE SAINT-AUBIN Paris 1724 – 1780 Paris
A Study: Two Women, one holding a pen and the other searching in her necessaire.
Drawing in black chalk. Dacier 381; sold in the sale of the collection of Baron Jérôme Pichon, Paris, 1897, as lot 128.
If drawings by Jean-Baptiste Pillement represent one important aspect of French art in the 18th century, Saint-Aubin’s graphic oeuvre shows a different but equally visible side of that fecund period. Saint-Aubin looked carefully at life in Paris, both aristocratic and less exalted, with the eye of one who saw revealing moments in small details of daily activities and in the pageantry of public ceremony, from a kindly but incisive viewpoint.
Saint-Aubin was a member of the famous Saint-Aubin family of artists which included his brothers Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin and Augustin de Saint-Aubin. Gabriel often worked in a small scale, in which his delicate sense of line invested apparently inconsequential moments with an air of concentration and understated emotional depth. The personal life inherent in his scenes constitutes one of the most important if at time unnoticed aspects of French art of the period.
Sheet: 84 x 102 mm 3 5/16 x 4 inches
