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Premium Jean Joseph Xavier BIDAULD (Carpentras, 1758 - Montmorency, …
See original version (French)
Jean Joseph Xavier BIDAULD (Carpentras, 1758 - Montmorency, …
See original version (French)
Lot no. 87
Description
Jean Joseph Xavier BIDAULD (Carpentras, 1758 - Montmorency, 1846)
Crossing the river with a draughtsman and his family
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated 'J.ph Bidauld / 1806' lower right
The crossing of the river with an artist and his family, oil on canvas, signed and dated, by J. J. X. Bidault
34.44 x 50.19 in.
87.5 x 127.5 cm
Provenance: possibly anonymous sale; Paris, 21 February 1924 (as Le Passage de la rivière, sold with its counterpart Le Départ pour la chasse)
Exhibitions : Possibly Salon of 1806, n° 41 under the title "Paysage".
Related work:
The counterpart to this painting went on sale in 2011 (anonymous sale; New York, Christie's, 26 January 2011, no. 53)
In the early 1800s, the artist received numerous commissions. The State granted him a housing allowance that enabled him to devote himself entirely to his art. In 1807, Caroline Murat commissioned a series of paintings from him for the Palais de l'Elysée, with the participation of Carle Vernet (1758 - 1836). The year before, in 1806, the artist had exhibited just one painting at the Salon, a landscape with no further details.
Here Bidauld produced an ambitious work that we can relate to another painting commissioned by Joseph Bonaparte, also dated 1806 and now in the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts.1 Joseph Bonaparte's country residence from 1798 onwards, the château and grounds of Mortefontaine, witness to the marriage of Joachim Murat and Caroline Bonaparte, were much admired by artists such as Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Hubert Robert. Bidauld, the Bonapartes' favourite landscape painter, visited regularly and began a series of paintings for the sovereign at the beginning of the 19th century. We think that the artist's subject here is the shores of the lake, a favourite theme of his. The diaphanous light bathes the composition, accentuating the shimmer of the trees with small touches on the foliage. On the right-hand edge, the painter, perhaps Bidauld himself, fixes the memory of that day on paper. The composition is enlivened by small anecdotal details. The landscape, which is not an absolutely faithful representation of the park, seems vast to us and the atmosphere is almost contemplative for a painting that was intended above all as a happy testimony before the fall of the Empire a few years later. In 1831, we find a similar theme in a work presented at the Salon, this time depicting the park at Ermenonville, just a few kilometres away. This painting illustrates the attraction and admiration his work aroused among his contemporaries. At the Salon of 1806, the critic Pierre Jean Baptiste Chaussard summed up the painter's strengths and weaknesses: "(...) The details are perhaps rendered with too much care and accuracy, which makes them dry, in addition to the fact that many of them must be lost at a certain distance, but his foliage is broad and affected, the factories are well lit and the tone is brilliant and silvery" 2.
We would like to thank Stéphane Rouvet for kindly confirming the authenticity of this work in an email dated 10 October 2025 and for writing this notice.
1. Donated by Paul H. Buchanan and Mrs. Robert W. Greenleaf, The Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Alicia Ballard Fine Arts Purchase Fund and the Allen Whitehill Clowes Fund (inv. 1985.189)
2. Pierre Jean Baptiste Chaussard, Le Pausanias français ou Description du Salon de 1806, Paris, 1808, p. 427.
Jean Joseph Xavier BIDAULD (Carpentras, 1758 - Montmorency, 1846)
87.5 x 127.5 cm
See original version (French)
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