FONTAINE, JENNY MARIA (French, 1862-1938) "Vue entre les Arbres" ("In the Park"). Signed, L.L. Oil on board, 5½" x 7" (sight); 13" x 15" (framed). Price Category: B

Jenny Maria Fontaine was born in Arras in northern France in 1862. She studied art at the Julien Academy with the leading teachers of the day: Jules Lefebvre, J. P. Laurens, and Benjamin Constant. She met with early success and exhibited regularly from 1888 at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français; also at Amiens (silver medal), Rouen (gold medal, 1893), and the Exposition Universelle at Paris (bronze medal, 1900). She specialized in female portraits, which had a particular delicacy when she was using pastel. In 1888, her canvas Rêverie, for which Jane Leindhy was the model, had a great success. Two years later she organized a public sale of her works in Arras, closed her studio there, and moved to Paris. She then totally changed the nature of her portraits, which became more energetic, winning her critical praise and visibility. Writing in L'Artésien in 1904, the critic A. Acremant said of her work: "Her portraits have earned her a place among the prominent artists of our time. Instead of trying to capture photographic details of her subjects, she shows them not as they pose but as really they are, according to their characters and deepest thoughts as reflected in their expressions and their eyes." Although primarily a portrait painter, Fontaine also worked in landscape and produced a number of flower and genre scenes, as well, an example being Pêcheuses de crevette à Villerville ("Shrimp Fishermen at Villerville"), which is owned by the Museum of Arras. This intimate impressionist sketch of mothers-or perhaps governesses-watching children at play in a Paris Park probably dates from around the turn of the century. Here Fontaine demonstrates that in addition to her academic training, she was able sketch rapidly and to paint for pure pleasure, with relaxed, fluid brush strokes. This small panel, combining figures and landscape, is one of her most charming works. Provenance: Waterhouse & Dodd, London, 1998. Museums: The Musée d'Arras (Pas de Calais, France) holds an extensive collection of her works. References: E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Gravures (Nouvelle Edition, Gründ: Paris,1999). Clara Erskine Clement, Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. (Houghton, Miflin and Co.: Boston, 1904). Gaston-Louis Marchal et Patrick Wintrebert, Arras et l'Art au XIXe Siécle (Arras, France: 1987). Chris Petteys, Dictionary of Women Artists Born Before 1900 (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1985). Gerald Schurr, Les Petits Maitres de la Peinture Valeur de Demain (Paris: 1975). Ulrich Thieme, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler (Seemann Verlag: Leipzig).

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