BOURGEOIS du CASTELET, attributed to -View of monastery in Marino,near Rome

Florent-Constant BOURGEOIS du CASTELET, attributed to
(Guiscard, 1767 – Passy, 1841)


View of a monastery in Marino, near Rome

Oil on canvas
22 x 27 cm

Related work: engraving (plate N ° 73) illustrating the book "Recueil de Vues et Fabriques Pittoresques d’Italie" published in 1804 and titled View of a monastery in Marino, 15 miles from Rome


Originally a military officer, Bourgeois devoted himself exclusively to art in the middle of the 1790s, perfecting his training in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, where he specialized in the landscape, and became first and foremost extraordinary draftsman; Paul Marmottan, in his "French School of Painting, 1789-1830", evokes his "great purity of style and the brilliant execution of his drawings, most of them very remarkable, especially those with wash." Highly sought after and appreciated during his lifetime, Bourgeois received many prizes and artistic awards, a lodging at the Louvre, and the Legion of Honor in 1827. He was domiciled at 3 quai Malaquais in Paris.

His activity as a painter is now less known, and yet he exhibited paintings at almost all the Salons from 1791 to 1830, with exclusively views of Italy for the period of the Revolution to the Consulate.


Our painting, a rare testimony of the painted work of Bourgeois du Castelet, is probably an autograph recovery of his engraving published in 1804; the composition is in the same direction, and the support is a canvas from Belot, active at 3 rue de l'Arbre Sec only from 1806. The differences between our painting and engraving reside in groups of figures, in the absence of the cross (on the pediment) in the painting, and in the organization of the clouds.

There is also a drawing wash (about 14 x 21 cm) identical to the engraving (including the figures and the cross), but in reverse, signed and dated 1807; it may be thought that it is the original drawing, thus executed before 1804, but that Bourgeois would have dated in 1807.


For now, we have not found the trace of this monastery designed by Bourgeois and located in Marino, on the shores of Lake Albano, southeast of Rome.