Jean Joseph Vaudechamp (French/Louisiana, 1790-1866), "Young Boy Leaning on Table with Bookplate", oil on canvas, unsigned, 44 in. x 33 3/4 in., framed. Note: Before Jean Joseph Vaudechamp traveled to New Orleans, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) and established himself as a portrait painter in Paris. Vaudechamp soon made a name for himself depicting wealthy, fashionable citizens of Paris, and in 1831, he traveled to New Orleans, where portraitists were highly sought within the Creole community. In his monograph on the artist, William Keyse Rudolph notes that: “By 1833, Vaudechamp’s style had crystallized. For the remainder of his time in New Orleans, he rarely experimented with more complex compositions…exceptions to the rule, like a series of portraits of the Forstall and Freret families, are just as revealing as the more traditional works.” In the portrait of a young boy offered here, Vaudechamp employed a neutral background, yet deviated from his traditional compositional pose for his sitters by adding layers of additional complexity. The standing boy leans his arm on a table, perhaps the same table seen in Vaudechamp’s portrait of James P. Freret and his son William P. Freret, and he rests his hand on a black and white bookplate. A similar bookplate device can be found in several of Vaudechamp’s portraits of children, such as the one of Mathilde Freret and Eugénie Freret from 1837 and the group portrait of the Forstall children of 1836. The young boy’s formal attire and the lavish dimensions of the portrait indicate the wealth of his family. According to family lore, this lot and the following lot of a Louisiana gentleman descended in the Bouchereau side of the family of Confederate general John C. Pemberton (1814-1881) and hung for many years in the family apartment in the Pontalba Buildings. Ref.: Rudolph, William K. Vaudechamp in New Orleans. New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2007

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