Author(s):
monnier, henry bonaventure (paris, 07–06–1799 - paris, 03–01–1877 — 3–6–1877), designer
delpech, françois seraphin (orléans, 1778 - 1825), printer-lithographer
type(s) of object(s): graphic arts, print
name(s): print
materials and techniques: vellum paper, watercolor, lithography
dimensions - artwork:
height: 27cm
width: 35. 3cm
dimensions - image:
height: 16. 8cm
width: 17. 1cm
dimensions - mounting:
height: 40cm
width: 30cm
description:
plate from the moral and philosophical sketches series
marks, inscriptions, hallmarks:
inscription - under the line on the left: "henry monnier" and on the right: "i. Lith. De delpech"
legend - under the image: the flycatchers/mr courtin/better than that: remove the man from society,. . You isolate him/all of society/it's fair
iconographic description:
five men are gathered in a village square. They are dressed in a rustic, but bourgeois style, perhaps a group of landowners. Monnier and balzac, inspired by the same situations, often come together in their descriptions of the morals of their contemporaries, one through drawing and the other through writing. "his nose, broken at birth and large at the end, gave him the astonished air of the flycatchers of paris. His lips were very lippy, and his large chin fell straight. His face, strongly colored, with square contours, offered, by the arrangement of the wrinkles, by the whole physiognomy, the ingenuously cunning character of the peasant. The general strength of the body, the size of the limbs, the broadness of the back, the width of the feet, everything denoted the villager transplanted to paris. His large, hairy hands, the fat phalanges of his wrinkled fingers, his large square nails would have attested to his origin, if there had not been vestiges of it throughout his person. He had on his lips the smile of benevolence that merchants put on when you enter their homes, but this commercial smile was the image of his inner contentment and depicted the state of his gentle soul. [excerpt from history of the grandeur and decadence of césar birotteau, by honoré de balzac]
themes / subjects / places represented:
subject of society, morals, village
mode of acquisition: purchase
institution: maison de balzac
inventory number: bal 98-160. Date: Unknown.
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