Lot 16: Emile Auguste Hublin (French, born 1830) A beautiful gift 31 3/4 x 25 3/4in (80.5 x 65.5cm) unframed

Emile Auguste Hublin (French, born 1830)
A beautiful gift
signed and dated 'E. Hublin/1869' (lower right)
oil on canvas
31 3/4 x 25 3/4in (80.5 x 65.5cm)
unframed
Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Texas;
Gifted to the present owner, 2008.

A native of Angers, in the Anjou province, Emile-Auguste Hublin moved to Paris in 1855, where he joined the prestigious studio of Francois-Edouard Picot at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Picot, who had studied with Jacques-Louis David, had trained scores of young painters in the Academic style of painting that emphasized excellent draftsmanship, brilliant coloring and an uncanny eye for beauty, while blending classical and contemporary subject matter. Two of his most prominent former students, William Bouguereau and Alexandre Cabanel, had won the Prix de Rome and had already established successful careers at the time of Hublin's arrival.

Hublin made his Salon debut in 1861 and continued to exhibit yearly until circa 1880. On his frequent trips to Brittany he would paint young girls with animals or in interiors and women at work as a document of local costumes and religious customs of the region, as Dagnan-Bouveret would do two decades later. His sitters are often placed against a flat, dark background that allows the figure to project forward bathed in warm light, emphasizing the skillful modelling of the body and the detail of the costume.