Attributed to Jean Henry MARLET (1771-1847) - Lot 37

Lot 37
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Estimation :
6000 - 8000 EUR
Attributed to Jean Henry MARLET (1771-1847) - Lot 37
Attributed to Jean Henry MARLET (1771-1847) Death of Abbé Chappe, in California, in 1769 Canvas. 174 x 239 cm. (Old restorations, accidents, lacks, lifts). We thank Baptiste Henriot for his identification of the subject and for his help in writing this note. Jean Chappe d'Auteroche, also called Abbé Chappe (Mauriac -Auvergne- 1728 - San José del Cabo in Mexico - Baja California Sur- 1769), was a French astronomer. After the observation of an eclipse of the sun in Siberia in 1761, commissioned by the Academy of France, and whose report published in 1768 is accompanied by illustrations of Jean-Baptiste Leprince, the abbot Chappe is sent in California to observe a similar phenomenon. He was accompanied by Vicente Doz and Salvador Médina, naval officers and astronomers of the King of Spain, as well as the draftsman Alexandre-Jean Noël. Abbé Chappe died some time after his arrival, satisfied in spite of everything to have filled his mission. His observations were published by C.-F. Cassini in 1772 in a work entitled Voyage en Californie pour l'observation du passage de Vénus sur le disque du soleil le 5 juin 1769. Alexandre Jean NOËL (1752-1834) exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1779 a "death of the Abbé Chappe on his bed surrounded by various companions and Indians" of a frieze composition close to ours, sold in Paris in 2012. The Indians are much less present there and rejected on the side. Our painting is probably the one that Jean-Henry Marlet exhibited at the Salon of 1817, under the n° 554 : Death of Abbé Chappe, in California, in 1769 ," Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche, uncle of the authors of the Telegraph, member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, was appointed in 1760, to go to Siberia to observe the passage of Venus on the disc of the Sun; he was appointed again in 1762 to observe this passage in California, where he died, victim of his zeal for science, some time after this observation, in 1769." Also known as a pioneer of lithography, Marlet adopts here a style close to that of Anne-Louis Girodet whose "Atala au tombeau" (1808) after Chateaubriand, had popularized Native American subjects under the Empire and the Restoration.
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