Lot 92

Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d'Orsay (1801 - 1852) A GALANT SCENE

A lovely theme for a girl's party with a humorous theme. One of the girls is disguised in a boyish, probably theatrical costume and rehearses the recitation of sonnets for a girl sitting on a sofa, who listens to her with interest. The third of the girls, meanwhile, holds the garderobe and tries on a cap to the reciting girl. Author Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay was a French count who painted as an amateur. He was a passionate Bonapartist and sought a political career, but due to large debts he failed. It is interesting that his engraving of a man in a top hat became a model for the mascot of the famous New Yorker magazine.