The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel by Margaret A. Oppenheimer Page A
Authors: Margaret A. Oppenheimer
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Art sales were held in the homes of defunct collectors and in the auction rooms of the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Bullion. The marquis de Cubières, with his knowledge of art and artists, could have introduced Eliza to these fascinating realms.
Her acquisitions reveal that she absorbed expertise as rapidly as the proverbial sponge. In its completed state, the Jumel collection was an encyclopedic selection of works dating from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. All the major categories of subject matter were represented: scenes from mythology, the Old Testament, and ancient history; landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes; devotional paintings, genre scenes, still life paintings, and portraits; even a few allegories and animal paintings. Mannerist, baroque, rococo, and contemporary paintings came from the French, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish schools.
The authenticity of certain works in Elizaâs collection remains a vexing question. She was not a deep-pocketed collector. The bigger names in her collection were represented by copies of varying quality or originals in crying need of restoration. Thus her
Cleopatra
, said to be by the Italian Baroque artist Guido Reni, was almost certainly a poor imitation in the style of Reni that was on and off the Paris art market in 1816 and ultimately sold for barely twenty-fourfrancs. 8 A âRubensâ
Battle of the Amazons
was presumably a copy of a well-known painting of the subject in Munich that was traditionally attributed to Rubens. But the fact that a work was not an original did not necessarily make it a bad painting. Before the invention of photography, replicas of Old Master paintings were prized for their beauty and educational value. 9 Elizaâs
Incredulity of Saint Thomas
, which she claimed as a work of the Italian master Guercino, may have been an excellent copy made by Joseph-Marie Vien, a past director of the French Royal Academy of Painting. The Vien canvas was sold in Paris in October 1816 for 109 francs, a handsome price for a work known to be a copy. 10
Two of Elizaâs most highly praised paintings were by living artists, contemporary art being a niche where it was still possible to buy high-quality works for minimal sums. An attractive genre scene by Jean-François Garneray, painted around 1793, showed a young woman plucking a guitar as a boy played with his cat under the eye of an elderly woman. 11 Eliza also owned one of Jean-Frédéric Schallâs jewel-like little paintings, creations that summoned up the pleasures of the ancien régime with their graceful dancers and amorous couples. Her acquisition, full of delicate charm, was a picture of a girl with a dog. 12
Her budget stretched to Old Master paintings by artists who were out of fashion or whose works were not in high demand. For example, she owned a painting titled
Rejoicing of Africans
by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Frans Post, who visited South America and painted the plantations of Brazil. His canvases sold for a reasonable sixty or seventy francs at the time Eliza was in Paris. 13 She possessed four French rococo portraits by Jean-Marc Nattier as wellâ
Louis XV in the Dress of Bacchus
gives their flavorâand genre scenes and an allegory by his contemporary Jean Raoux. 14 The titlesâ
Lovely Courtesan: Summer Scene
, for exampleâsuggest a sun-drenched charm. All these paintings were probably bargain-priced, painted in a mode dismissed as reactionary and corrupt since the rise of neoclassicism and the French Revolution.
The question of why Eliza began collecting is unresolved. However, her turn toward the fine arts was consistent with her evident eagerness for self-cultivation: reading, studying the piano, improving her facility in French. It accorded equally with her desire for acceptance by the upper classes. A sophisticated and wide-ranging collection would help Eliza distinguish herself from parvenus such as a
Her acquisitions reveal that she absorbed expertise as rapidly as the proverbial sponge. In its completed state, the Jumel collection was an encyclopedic selection of works dating from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. All the major categories of subject matter were represented: scenes from mythology, the Old Testament, and ancient history; landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes; devotional paintings, genre scenes, still life paintings, and portraits; even a few allegories and animal paintings. Mannerist, baroque, rococo, and contemporary paintings came from the French, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish schools.
The authenticity of certain works in Elizaâs collection remains a vexing question. She was not a deep-pocketed collector. The bigger names in her collection were represented by copies of varying quality or originals in crying need of restoration. Thus her
Cleopatra
, said to be by the Italian Baroque artist Guido Reni, was almost certainly a poor imitation in the style of Reni that was on and off the Paris art market in 1816 and ultimately sold for barely twenty-fourfrancs. 8 A âRubensâ
Battle of the Amazons
was presumably a copy of a well-known painting of the subject in Munich that was traditionally attributed to Rubens. But the fact that a work was not an original did not necessarily make it a bad painting. Before the invention of photography, replicas of Old Master paintings were prized for their beauty and educational value. 9 Elizaâs
Incredulity of Saint Thomas
, which she claimed as a work of the Italian master Guercino, may have been an excellent copy made by Joseph-Marie Vien, a past director of the French Royal Academy of Painting. The Vien canvas was sold in Paris in October 1816 for 109 francs, a handsome price for a work known to be a copy. 10
Two of Elizaâs most highly praised paintings were by living artists, contemporary art being a niche where it was still possible to buy high-quality works for minimal sums. An attractive genre scene by Jean-François Garneray, painted around 1793, showed a young woman plucking a guitar as a boy played with his cat under the eye of an elderly woman. 11 Eliza also owned one of Jean-Frédéric Schallâs jewel-like little paintings, creations that summoned up the pleasures of the ancien régime with their graceful dancers and amorous couples. Her acquisition, full of delicate charm, was a picture of a girl with a dog. 12
Her budget stretched to Old Master paintings by artists who were out of fashion or whose works were not in high demand. For example, she owned a painting titled
Rejoicing of Africans
by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Frans Post, who visited South America and painted the plantations of Brazil. His canvases sold for a reasonable sixty or seventy francs at the time Eliza was in Paris. 13 She possessed four French rococo portraits by Jean-Marc Nattier as wellâ
Louis XV in the Dress of Bacchus
gives their flavorâand genre scenes and an allegory by his contemporary Jean Raoux. 14 The titlesâ
Lovely Courtesan: Summer Scene
, for exampleâsuggest a sun-drenched charm. All these paintings were probably bargain-priced, painted in a mode dismissed as reactionary and corrupt since the rise of neoclassicism and the French Revolution.
The question of why Eliza began collecting is unresolved. However, her turn toward the fine arts was consistent with her evident eagerness for self-cultivation: reading, studying the piano, improving her facility in French. It accorded equally with her desire for acceptance by the upper classes. A sophisticated and wide-ranging collection would help Eliza distinguish herself from parvenus such as a
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