Lot 20: Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassale (French, b. 1839)

Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassale (French, b. 1839)
Le Salon de 1874
signed 'CABAILLOT-LASSALE.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 32 1/8 in. (100 x 81.5 cm)

with Jacques Kugel, Paris.
His sale; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 25 January 1980, lot 4 (as Jean Béraud).
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
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It was a natural development for Camille-Léopold to dedicate himself to the art of painting. His father was a well respected artist whose work clearly displayed a fondness for painting children. After a short apprenticeship with his father, Camille-Léopold was accepted to study with Edouard Frère, brother of well known Orientalist painter Charles Théodore Frère.

The artist was inspired by the elegant and elaborate fashions of the day and his oeuvre shows strong ties with the work of contemporaries such as James Jacques Joseph Tissot and Alfred Stevens. These artists had an obvious interest in depicting contemporary people and places with a meticulous technique, an excellent sense of colour and compositional balance, which resulted in paintings that were hugely attractive.

The annual Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Camille-Léopold exhibited from 1864 until 1889, was also a great source of visual inspiration for him, the venue being one of the most fashionable events in the Paris social calendar. In 1875 he submitted the highly original work Le Salon de Sculpture de 1874 which, similarly to the present lot, depicts a scene set at the Salon de Paris (Fig 1.).

The present lot accurately depicts the display of paintings at the Salon in 1874. The catalogue numbers for the exhibited paintings as well as their status within the competition (Hors Concours as noted on the frame) are clearly legible. From the top left to bottom right the following works can be seen:

Eugene Petit, Chrysanthèmes et Pêches (cat.no. 1473);
Jules-Jacques Veyrassat, Charrette en Forêt (cat.no. 1781);
Ernest Guillemer, Vallée de Franchard, Fontainebleau (cat.no. 876);
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Le Soir (cat.no. 459);
Léon Richet, Moulin à Vent, en Picardie (cat.no. 1558);
Henriette Browne, Portrait de M.E.S (cat.no. 274).

This realistic display is counter pointed by the idealized Belle Époque atmosphere created by Cabaillot-Lassalle. The older woman is leafing through the exhibition catalogue while a conversation between two elegant women in the centre is patiently observed by a young girl in a startlingly blue dress. The present lot is both an historical document and an artistic creation, transporting the spectator to the height of Parisian elegance and refinement.