Lot 314: Marie Adrien Persac (French/New Orleans,

Marie Adrien Persac (French/New Orleans, 1823-1873), "Palo Alto Plantation, Ascension Parish", gouache and collage on paper, 17 in. x 23 in., attractively matted and framed. Provenance: With Pierre Oscar Ayraud; Thence to his daughter, Mary Lee Ayraud (Mrs. Frederick Landry), 1867; Thence to her daughter, Mary Lee Landry (Mrs. Arthur A. Lemann), 1929; Thence to her son, Arthur A."Bubs" Lemann, Jr., 1954 Thence by descent in the Lemann Family. Published: Bacot, H. Parrott et al, Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist, 2000, pp. 62-63; Bacot, Barbara S.R., "Marie Adrien Persac: Architect, Artist and Engineer," The Magazine Antiques, November, 1991, pp. 806-815 Note: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist is dedicated "to the memory of Arthur A. 'Bubs' Lemann (1917-1993) Pioneer Researcher of the life and works of Marie Adrien Persac." We would like to thank Pat and Barbara Bacot for sharing the following personal anecdote and additional information which is unavailable elsewhere: Arthur A. "Bubs" Lemann was a charming and passionate gentleman. He was particularly passionate about the work of Adrien Persac because he had this wonderful gouache and collage portrait hanging in the front hall of his home, Palo Alto on Bayou Lafourche in Ascension Parish. In 1975, when I acquired in my capacity as curator of LSU's art museum the first of the museum's five Persac gouaches, Bubs was one of the first to come to the museum. He came enthusiastically bearing his own portfolio of information about the artist, the artist's family and numerous photographs he had made of other Persac paintings. He had devoted years to locating and researching these works. Then came the invitation for my wife and me to come for lunch at Palo Alto and see the painting. We drove up and were waved into the kitchen wing, where the side gallery was a marvelously old-fashioned "new" kitchen added between the house and the detached kitchen shown in the painting. Camille, his delightful and equally charming wife, greeted us in an aromatic cloud redolent of the gumbo she was preparing. We still treasure the recipes this notable cook was so willing to share. In the best southern manner I immediately established that Camille's half-sister, the New Orleans collector Sue Hyams was a friend of ours. Bubs was waiting impatiently to take us into the main house to see his painting. The amber glass of the front door side- and over-lights (carefully recorded in the picture) made the central hall somewhat dim, but the painting hanging halfway down the hall softly glowed. While chills ran up and down our spines at the thrill of being in the very house depicted in the painting, we did not realize over thirty years ago that this was the only privately-owned gouache portrait still hanging in the house it depicted. Such provenance is all-important. Now the National Trust's Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia will be the only house with its Persac views in the house, where images of the facade and bayou elevation hang in the second-floor salon. At the door to his office in Exchange Alley, Persac hung his sign "DESSIN D'ARCHITURE ET DES MACHINES, portraits et passage." He was what he says he was -- an architect and civil engineer who painted portraits and landscapes. Educated in France, he was not an academic painter, but neither was he an inspired craftsman or folk artist. Like the Latrobes, architects who could paint, he was a master of pen, ink and watercolor. Like Gualdi, he transcended drafting to make the most notable part of his career as a painter. In all of the landscapes, the perspective is panoramic and both buildings and trees are attenuated. The detail is exquisite, and there is every reason to believe that it is completely accurate. It has been said that the images are photographic and photography was an aid to accuracy. But no photograph could capture either the encompassing view or the facade unhidden by vegetation --- certainly not in color. Comparing the house at Palo Alto today to the painting, one can see that the detail of the painting is so ac urate and minute that even the octagonal panes of the side- and over-lights around the front door are depicted. Bubs and Camille well knew the accuracy of the image of the house and reconstructed the small double-return staircase at the front of the house and the pigeonnier according to the painting. According to family tradition, the vine-covered building with white curtains is the schoolhouse. Persac's view is the only record of it and all that was lost over time -- fences, sugar house to the rear, overseer's house, plantation bell, quarters and boat house. The paper of the gouaches was always French all rag, and two gouaches have the cacheted stamp of M. Pottin of Nantes. (After the Civil War he eschewed fine French paper in favor of inexpensive pulp paper, and he switched to the less laborious medium of transparent watercolor.) For his principal landscapes such as Palo Alto, the medium is watercolor enhanced by gouache and glaze. Unique in landscape painting is his use of collage. The figures in the foreground are particularly interesting in that the print on the other side can be seen through the white of the lady's shawl. For the foregrounds, Persac often painted figures from weekly or daily publications, cut them out and glued them to the landscape. He always painted background figures, such as the gentleman in white standing at the foot of the stairs, believed by the family to be Pierre Oscar Ayraud, the builder of the house who commissioned the painting.