CHARLOTTE-AMABLE DU MINGUY (1808-1885)

A STILL LIFE OF FLOWERS
Signed l.r.
Watercolour with pencil on vellum
45 x 35 cm
 
 
 
Charlotte-Amable du Barle du Puget was an 'amateur' botanical artist, in an age when many French women from the upper echelons of society in France practiced the genre but were barred by convention from professionalising. At twenty, she married Bernard Boucher Duminguy, 19 years her senior, and would go on to have two children with him. Her paintings remained almost entirely unknown to the general public, staying in the family collection at the family château in Indre until their dispersal at auction in 2016.
 
It is highly probable that she was taught at some point by the great French painter of flowers Pierre-Joseph Redouté, whose influence is immediately discernible in the present sheet, with the bright white background and elegant composition, the saturated colours of the flowers and the crispness of the lines.