Marie Adrien Persac (French/New Orleans, 1823-1873) , "Manchac, Iberville Parish", 1851 or 1857, watercolor and gouache on pulp paper, signed and dated lower right, 17 1/2 in. x 25 3/4 in., framed . Provenance: James Norfleet Brown (1806-1859); thence by descent . Ill.: Bacot, H. Parrott, Bacot, Barbara S., et al. Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000, pp. 56-57. Note: The artist Marie Adrien Persac is known best for his gouache and watercolor paintings of south Louisiana plantations. "Manchac" is one of the surviving twenty known works of this genre. As an American artist, Persac falls between the fine arts of the Hudson River School and folk art. Trained in France as an engineer, his works are clearly those of an architect, as are seen most clearly in his drawings of Canal Street in The Historic New Orleans Collection and his advertisements for property sales in New Orleans' Notarial Archives. Yet his plantation paintings go beyond strict architectural delineation. On the brink of the Civil War, his is a halcyon South. The sky is always blue; the cane and grass, always green; and the white of houses, outbuildings and fences, always newly painted or whitewashed. Like the others, "Manchac" is not only a landscape but also a portrait. The owners commissioned portraits of their houses to hang in pride of place in those very homes. Like the sitters in family portraits, the houses are in their best dress, without fallen palings or unpainted walls to be seen, but like the sitter, all must be clearly recognizable. With his draftsman's training, Persac was the very man to paint house and garden and appurtenances in exact detail. The two paintings of Shadows-on-the-Teche are the only ones which still hang in the original house. In comparing the surviving houses to their paintings, every part of the architecture is clearly there, but with no embellishments. Since this is true, it is safe to conclude that every part of scene--outbuildings, fences, ditches and gardens--is equally correct. What is seen in the painting was indeed there. This property of John Norfleet Brown is shown on "Norman's Chart of the Mississippi River," also drawn by Persac. The house stood in Iberville Parish on the east bank of the river and the south bank of Bayou Manchac and faced the river, with the sugarhouse far to the rear. The road, ditches and fences are seen to comply with the 1821 ordinances of East Baton Rouge Parish just on the north side of the bayou. Horses and sheep enliven the view of the pasture; the latter were decorative and also for the table. The garden is worth a special note. The more popular taste in mid-century was for a grass yard with trees, although Louisianians were fond of lining theirs with trees, especially live oaks. Here regimented rows of ornamentals--trees, shrubs and agave--line the drive. The trees along the fence are unnaturally tall in order not to block the view of the house. With his meticulous attention to detail and distinctive viewpoint, Persac created one painting that is simultaneously a portrait of a grand home, a historical document and a beautiful work of art which reveals the landscape and way of life in 1850s Louisiana from a unique and rare perspective.Neal Auction Company would like to thank Barbara SoRelle Bacot for her gracious assistance in cataloguing this lot and writing the catalogue note.

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