Lot 38: Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer (Dutch, 1839-1902) The promenade 33 1/2 x 59 1/4in (88 x 148cm)

Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer (Dutch, 1839-1902)
The promenade signed 'FHKaemmerer' (lower left)oil on canvas33 1/2 x 59 1/4in (88 x 148cm)

Provenance: Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 7 May 1998, lot 192;Acquired from the above by the present owner. In this large-format composition, Kaemmerer takes up one of his most beloved themes: young ladies, fashionably dressed, leisurely strolling through a park. The format allows the artist to deploy his vast artistic arsenal in the depiction of the cheerful and colorful group. Kaemmerer learned his unparalleled skill of execution under the tutelage of Jean Leon Gerôme at the Académie des Beaux-Arts after moving to Paris from The Hague in 1865. While trained as a landscape painter in the manner of the Hague School, the artist adopted a more academic style in Paris under the influence of Gerôme, later finding a winning formula in costume painting that he pursued for the rest of his career. Here he joined a growing group of painters who found their inspiration in past centuries, often under the influence of the contemporary novels by Alexandre Dumas and Sir Walter Scott. These painters and their followers yearned for the simpler times in history, when romance and chivalry outweighed the head-spinning progress of the industrial revolution.In The Promenade, Kaemmerer returned to the period of the late 1820s, when ladies' dresses sported large bouffant sleeves, accessorized with ornately decorated hats. The artist favored this period that saw the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy after Napoleon's downfall and the height of French Romanticism. He used the panoramic format in several paintings with the same subject, some of them including gentlemen wearing the bicorn hat of the Directoire era. The young ladies in the present composition are presumably students of one of the Parisian boarding schools, dedicated to the education of young women from the upper class. They are strolling carefree through the park, badminton rackets in hand, looking forward to an anticipated game. Their teacher, buttoned up and wrapped in a black scarf, looks disapprovingly towards the animated group that has attracted the attention of two young painters looking on intently.