Lot 254: Etienne Aubry , Versailles 1745 - 1781 A kitchen interior with a mother feeding her young child; An interior with a mother teaching her daughter to read both oil on canvas, oval

a pair, the latter signed and dated lower left: E. Aubry. 1778 both oil on canvas, oval Quantity: 2

measurements note 45.9 by 54.9 cm.; 18 by 21 7/8 in.

Anonymous sale, Paris, Tajan, 30 June 2000, lot 56.

Aubry met an untimely death at the age of 36, but during his life he enjoyed a high level of success and attracted praise from critics such as Denis Diderot. He trained as a portrait painter with Jacques Antoine de Silvestre (1719-1809) and Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809) but it is for the charm of his genre scenes such as these for which he is now most highly regarded. In 1775, the same year he was received into the Académie, he began to exhibit intimate family scenes such as the present canvases. The informality and simplicity of these sentimental interiors, treated with a subdued and subtle palette, together with their unusual delicacy of feeling, is truly alluring. Although they have their roots in the style of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, they are closest in style to the works of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, to whom the works of Aubry have often been misattributed in the past. The present works should be compared to his Paternal Love in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (see P. Conisbee, Painting in Eighteenth Century France, Oxford 1981, p. 166, reproduced fig. 144).