JEAN-HENRI-ALEXANDRE PERNET (1763–1789)

AN ARCHITECTURAL CAPRICCIO
Signed centre left
Gouache with pen & ink on paper
18 x 14 cm
 
 
 
 
Little is known of Jean-Henri Alexandre Pernet: he was mentioned in the list of students at the Académie Royale de Peinture in 1783 as being twenty years old, living with his family on the Rue d’Argenteuil, and we know that he was a pupil of the painter Pierre-Antoined Demachy. Although Pernet was described as a painter in the Academy lists, the works that are known by him are exclusively drawings in watercolour and pen & ink with wash. Among these, the most common are small pairs of capricci: oval scenes of architectural fantasy, often with scenes which, individually, seem asymmetrical and chaotic, but with their pendants present a coherent whole space, with the two pictures in concert with each other. Pernet also produced drawings for ornamental engravings, used as decoration for ornamental boxes and for buttons.