Neal Auction Louisiana Purchase 2015

Additional information at www.nealauction.com 43 189. Marie Adrien Persac (French, 1823‑1873, act. Louisiana 1851‑1873) , “Capriccio of a Louisiana Landscape with Bayou and Figures”, c. 1851‑1873, gouache on paper, signed “A. Persac” lower center, 5 1/8 in. x 6 7/8 in., framed. $25000/35000 Published presumably, as one of a group still remaining in France; see below: H. Parrott Bacot, et alia, Marie Adrien Persac, Louisiana Artist , Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2000, pages 6-7. On 15 July 1856 Persac advertised with his then partner William G.Vail, in the Baton Rouge DailyAdvocate, announcing their recent opening of a Daguerreotype studio: “Their rooms are tastefully decorated by many charming views from the pencil and brush of Mr. Persac.” In his definitive monograph of 2000 on the artist, H. Parrott Bacot notes that “the ‘charming views’ cited in the advertisement were doubtless small watercolor, gouache, and pen-and-ink sketches…” Bacot continues, “This group of paintings includes…two southern landscapes (as indicated by moss-draped trees) … These watercolors appear to have been executed over a broad period …between 1856 in Baton Rouge and c. 1867…in New Orleans,” since two are labeled with an address at 130 Canal Street where Persac worked in the mid-1860s. (It might further be noted that Persac won prize competitions for exactly comparable works in New Orleans in 1867, 1869, 1870, and 1871, and that he presented at least one such work as well at an exhibition in France in 1868.) Bacot concludes his biographical essay with the observation that “a third-generation descendant of Adrien’s older brother, Marie-Amédée, has no less than seven Louisiana landscapes done by Adrien” (still in France): the present sheet is very possibly one from that group. Persac’s few published works have concentrated on some two dozen large panoramic views of south Louisiana plantation houses and their grounds, all executed between c. 1852 (at the earliest) or (more probably) 1857, and 1861: almost all were dated by the artist, and all are larger than the present drawing. All, without exception, are painted as rectangles. Indeed, the conspicuous oval shape immediately distinguishes this composition: it is emphatically not the “portrait of a place” (like the artist’s precise rectangular renderings); but rather a more imaginative recombination of ‘Acadian’ motifs, suggestively brought together to evoke a familiar landscape. Of its elements that are repeated in the dated drawings, the most striking is the short Y-shaped tree exactly at the center: precisely the same tree is seen in Persac’s rendering of Bois de Flèche Plantation, dated “1861.” The pirogue is again present in Persac’s view of Albania Plantation, once more dated “1861;” the buildings are approximated in his early image of Daigre House (of the 1850s), while the chickens are repeated in some half-dozen of his topographical views, executed between 1857 and 1861. (On the other hand, the very prominent pigs, uniquely appropriate to this riparian landscape, are decisively distinguished from Persac’s many renderings of sheep on plantation lawns, as for example in his images of Manchac 1857, Hope 1859, or Magnolia 1861.) Ref.: H. Parrott Bacot, et alia, Marie Adrien Persac, Louisiana Artist , Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2000; Barbara SoRelle Bacot, “Marie Adrien Persac; Architect, Artist, and Engineer,” in The Magazine Antiques (November 1991), pp. 806-815; John A. Mahé II and Rosanne McCaffrey, Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists, 1718-1918 , New Orleans, THNOC, 1987, pp. 299-301; John Wilton-Ely, “Capriccio,” in The Grove Dictionary of Art , Jane Turner, ed., 34 vols, London, 1996, vol. 5, pp. 685-688. 190. José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza (Mexican/Louisiana, 1750‑1802) , “Portrait of a Louisiana Gentleman”, 1801, oil on canvas, signed, dated and inscribed “J. M. Salazar, pinxit, Nova Aurelia, 1801” lower right, 36 1/4 in. x 27 in., antique gilt frame. $40000/60000 Note: Little is known concerning the early life of the artist José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza. What is clear is that by 1782, when Salazar had arrived in New Orleans from the Yucatán, he was already a mature artist – as evidenced by the portraiture he created during the next two decades featuring Louisiana’s most prominent civic, military and religious elite. Of the fifty-three known works attributed to Salazar, only thirteen are signed and even fewer are additionally inscribed. From the “Portrait of Abraham Kortright Brasher,” signed, dated 1800, and inscribed “New Orleans,” and the “Portrait of James Mather, Mayor of New Orleans,” signed and dated 1802, it is clear that Salazar was actively painting in this city even during the year of his death; it is not surprising, therefore, to find this portrait of a New Orleans gentleman dated to 1801. While the New Orleans gentleman in this painting remains unidentified, a relatively common occurrence among Salazar paintings, there are several prominent families living in or near New Orleans in 1801 with gentlemen of the approximate age of our sitter. Three candidates - based on age and prominence within the Louisiana community with connections to Salazar through family portraits - should be examined as likely sitters for the portrait offered here: Andry, de la Vergne and Roman. (1) Bernard Noel Manuel Andry (1758-1839), who was born in New Orleans, owned a plantation in what is now LaPlace, Louisiana, near the site of the ill-fated 1811 German Coast Slave Uprising. Andry lived on his plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish and was a frequent visitor to New Orleans, where he met and married his second wife, Josephine Trudeau, whose father, Carlos Laveau Trudeau, was a well-known surveyor in New Orleans who owned property in the French Quarter.The portraits of Carlos Trudeau and his wife, in the collection of Tulane University, are among the finest of the paintings attributed to Salazar. Salazar is also known to have painted portraits of two of Trudeau’s other sons- in-law, Thomas Urquhart and General James Wilkinson (sold Neal Auction Company, November 2013, lot 465). (2) Count Pierre de la Vergne (1760-1813) was born in France and came to New Orleans as a member of the French Royal Military. Settling in Louisiana, he married Marie Elizabeth du Verjé (also spelled du Vergier) de Marie, the widow of Jacques Verret, in 1780. The couple had a son, Hugues de la Vergne, in 1792. Paintings illustrated in Louisiana Portraits depict both Countess Marie Elizabeth de la Vergne, attributed to Salazar circa 1792, and Hugues de la Vergne, painted by A.D. Lansot in 1838. (3) Jacques Etienne Roman (1748-1811) lived in Opelousas, where he greatly profited from his sugar plantations and cattle ranches. He married Marie Louise Patin and had six sons and one daughter. Three of the six sons followed in their father’s footsteps and became prosperous plantation owners. The daughter, Josephine, married Valcour Aime, one of the greatest sugar planters of the time. Their sons also became leading sugar planters in Louisiana – the oldest, Andre Bienvenu Roman, later became the ninth governor of Louisiana, and the youngest, Jacques Telesphore Roman, built the famed plantation Oak Alley. These three distinguished figures represent likely candidates for the identity of the sitter here, a man undoubtedly of prominence with the means necessary to procure a likeness by the most admired portraitist in colonial Louisiana. Ref.: National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Louisiana. Louisiana Portraits . New Orleans: Wetzel Printing, Inc., 1975. Arthur, Stanley Clisby and de Kernion, George Campbell Huchet. Old Families of Louisiana . Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1931.