Philippe PARROT (1831-1894) La cueillette des fleurs

Oil on canvas, signed lower right and dated 1887
65 cm x 54 cm / With its frame 85 cm x 74 cm

Born in Dordogne in 1831, Philippe Parrot studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Thanks to his innate talent, he won several First Prizes in drawing, despite having received no formal artistic training. After returning to Périgord, he returned to Paris and trained at the Académie Suisse, where great masters such as Corot, Courbet, Manet, Monet, and many others trained. From 1861, this painter exhibited superb nudes at the Salon. Compared to Ingres and Jean-Jacques Henner, Parrot received medals in 1868, 1870, and 1872. Women were his favorite subject. He depicted them in mythological and allegorical scenes, both nude and clothed.

Parrot's paintings, very rare on the market, belong to the great period of the academic nude. His painting "Young Girl Bathing," exhibited at the Salon of 1867, can be compared to Ingres's nude "The Spring," completed in 1856. While Parrot's subjects lack the flamboyance of Bouguereau's, his works exude a sense of calm and plenitude. From 1880 onward, his palette lightened, and his compositions foreshadowed a Symbolist vision. Philippe Parrot's figures are infinitely elegant, his landscapes imbued with extreme poetry.

Parrot produced extremely meticulous paintings, but in very small quantities. This is why he is still little known to the general public today, even though several of his works were acquired by French museums immediately after their completion. Among the most important are "Elegy" at the Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts, "Girl Bathing" at the Périgord Museum of Art and Archaeology, or "Sarah Bernhardt" at the Comédie Française in Paris.

Our work, created in 1887, is admirably well composed: the vanishing lines converge towards the point where the river disappears in a halo of light. This rural subject captures, almost like a photograph, a moment of life at the end of the 19th century. Parrot here paves the way for the painter Julien Dupré, a great specialist of the French countryside. In a suspended moment, the two young women with perfect faces seem lost in their thoughts. The drawing of the clothing and figures is precise, while that of the landscape fades, creating an almost unreal depth. This oil painting, on its original canvas, is housed in a gilded wood frame.