Lot 25: Louis-François, Baron Lejeune (French, 1775-1848),

Louis-François, Baron Lejeune (French, 1775-1848), "A Noble Napoleonic Cadet", c. 1805, oil on canvas, signed "F. Lejune" on edge of the table at left center, with Atlantic Transports, Paris, and Davies, Turner & Co., Ltd., London labels en verso of frame, the latter inscribed "Rothschild"; inscribed in pencil "signé F. Lejune" en verso of stretcher, 36 3/4 in. x 29 in., in a very good period frame.
PLEASE NOTE: Provenance: With the collector, Wayne Francis Palmer (1895-1983), Springlake Plantation, Mobile, AL; thence by descent in the Palmer Family. Wayne Francis Palmer was a graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover; Dartmouth College; and the U.S. Naval Academy. Palmer is noted for his many accomplishments in the field of engineering, which include the design and construction of the Bankhead and George Wallace subaqueous Tunnels in Mobile, AL, and the publications Developments in Trench-Type Tunnel Construction, 1975, and Men of Ships and Steel, 1935. An avid art and antiques collector, Palmer was equally philanthropic. As a supporter of the Mobile Museum of Art, Palmer donated numerous works to that institution throughout the years, including: "View of Girgenti, Sicily" by Camille Jean Baptiste Corot (G73.17.02); "Woman Reading" by Pablo Picasso (G77.40.01); "Vase of Flowers" by Pierre August Renoir (G71.24.01); "Morning," "Noon", and "Night" by Dominique Serres (G75.16.01 -.03); and "Grand Bank - East Hampton" by Thomas Moran (G74.22.01), among others. Note: This evocative picture perfectly catches the understated mood and quiet sensuality of Lejeune's earliest manner. His subject--perhaps one of the aides-de-camp of Marshal Berthier, whose uniforms and accoutrements he collectively painted in an extended series from 1800 to 1812--is depicted as the young scion of a noble house (his family's shield of arms, with a princely or ducal coronet, is shown in the upper corner), at the delicate stage of transition from adolescence to manhood. His direct gaze, tender expression, and overlarge hands make it clear that Lejeune responded directly to the dreaming appeal of this handsome young cadet. The most striking thing about the image is the nonchalant way in which a high officer's sword is being disengaged from its sheath: the blade is prominently inscribed "SA MA...", which could even be a reference to "HIS MA[jesty] (the Emperor). It may be that the eventual identification of the armorial blazon (whose coronet is capped with a cross, and whose charges are "party, silver with three sable bars barry, surmounted by a bend gules; and a Cross of Jerusalem, gules") will perhaps be traced to a knightly or clerical family which might have won the latter element in the Crusades. Or it may be that details of the uniform, helmet, sword, or arms might reveal a closer link with Napoleon himself. Baron Lejeune was born in Strasbourg and studied in the Parisian studio of Pierre-Henri de Valençiennes (1750-1819), but enlisted in the army in 1792. Until his retirement 32 years later, he had a brilliant career with the engineers and artillery, and as aide-de-camp to General Jacob, then Marshal Berthier, and chief of staff to General Davout, then Marshal Oudinot. He became a sergeant in 1793, a lieutenant in 1794, a captain in 1798, a colonel in 1808, and a general in 1812; he rose successively through three ranks to become a commander of the Légion d'Honneur, and was also a commander of the Order of Maximilian, a member of the Order of Leopold, and a Knight of Saint-Louis. He was ennobled as a Baron d'Empire in 1810. He was married in 1821 to the sister of General Clary, a niece of the Queen of Sweden; in 1824 the King of Sweden conferred on him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword. Throughout his career he kept his artistic materials close to hand, and became celebrated for the truth and vigor of his battle-pictures, some of the grandest of which are at Versailles. He was a precocious pioneer in the introduction of lithography to France: in 1806 he drew and printed an edition of his Cossack on the Munich press of Alois Senefelder (1771-1834), the inventor of the technique, and that same week presented a print of it to Napoleon in Paris. His windblown and richly colored Self-Portrait of 1813, in which he is shown sketching on his helmet, in full uniform, is one of the principal icons of Romantic art. He became director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse in 1837, and mayor of that city in 1841; he died there of a heart attack at 73