Alfred Boisseau (French/American, 1823-1901), "Miss Mary Tanner (b. 1833/1834), Waubun Plantation, Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana", 1849, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left center, exhibition label (probably New Orleans Museum of Art) en verso, titled on brass artist plaque, 39-1/2" x 31-1/2". Presented in a giltwood frame. Provenance: Descended in the family of the sitter; Ex-collection Don Didier, New Orleans, Louisiana. Illustrated: Pennington, Estill Curtis, Down River: Currents of Style in Louisiana Painting, 1800-1950 (Pelican Publishing: Gretna, LA, 1991), p. 2. Rarely is a portrait from Alfred BoisseauΓÇÖs brief tenure in Louisiana "discovered", even rarer is its sale at auction. Since 1976, only eight recorded portraits have been sold at auction, and only one of those is of a Louisiana belle of equal execution- Portrait of a Young Lady, possibly Mrs. Alfred LeMore, nee Marie Xavier Athenais Chretien (b. 1830). The portrait offered here of Miss Mary Tanner painted in September, 1849, is both one of the first portraits Boisseau is known to have done after his return from France and one of the last Louisiana ones he painted before he embarked for New York. Boisseau, a native of France, studied under Paul Delaroche, a Neo-Classical painter of historical and mythological scenes, before debuting at the Paris Salon in 1842. Boisseau, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Jean-Joseph Vaudechamp and Jacques Amans sought a more lucrative market abroad in the "New World." Classical style paintings, marked by strong lighting, fine detail and a polished finish, appealed to the burgeoning French Creole class of merchants and plantation owners eager to commemorate their success. Boisseau's early portraits very much belong to this tradition- the sitters rendered at three-quarter to full profile occupy the entire picture plane dominating the landscape, fields and finery before which they are placed, evoking a sense of pride and mastery. Miss Tanner, though a mere girl of fifteen or sixteen years old, presents a commanding stature with her black hoop-skirt, piercing eyes and hair, framed before a window with lush crimson drapery swept aside to reveal an impressive, though diminutive, landscape of Live Oaks and a family plot loosely painted in tertiary colors. As the portrait, painted at Waubun Plantation, indicates, Miss Tanner comes from an illustrious family, one that along with the Verrets, and Thibodauxs, had been instrumental in the development of Terrebonne parish, which was partitioned from Lafourche in 1822. The sitter, Mary, was the fifth daughter of Lemuel Tanner (1786-1843) and Marie Agnes Celeste Belanger (1797-1864). Mr. Tanner, born in Screven, Georgia, served as a First Lieutenant in the War of 1812 in the Seventh Regiment of the Louisiana Militia. In 1814, he settled in Lafourche and married Belanger, who was jointly related through blood and marriage to the Thibodaux family. The Belanger and Tanner families were wealthy planters, who owned lands in both parishes that adjoined near Bayou Terrebonne. In the 1860 census, Mrs. Tanner recorded the Waubun Plantation real estate value at $1000,000; personal property at $230,000. The Plantation (also near Bayou Terrebonne) was purchased in 1845, following the death of Lemuel Tanner in 1843, and remained in the family until after the death of Celeste in 1864. A decade before her death, Mrs. Tanner gifted two large parcels of the land to the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railway, which would later become greatly contested in the Supreme Court of Louisiana in 1895 and 1911 when the title was acquired by riverboat Captain John T. Moore (a childhood friend of Mark Twain), who owned the plantation from 1895-1916. The TannerΓÇÖs land (via succession) was wrought with legal issues. In 1852 the Supreme Court of Louisiana overturned a previous ruling and mandated that restitution be paid to Lemuel TannerΓÇÖs heirs that listed Mary, her mother and eight of her sisters and brothers. Mary's sister Rosella (b. 1830) was not noted as an heir, because she died in 1846, leaving her older sister Elizabeth (b. 1823) and younger sisters Brigitte (b. 1836) and Louisa (b. 1840) in the home at the time of the portrait commission. What became of Mary after 1852 is shrouded in mystery. Marriage certificates issued in Louisiana for women named Mary Tanner (born 1833-1835) list that a Mary Ester Tanner, born 1834, (Ester is also the name and middle name of two of her sisters) married Edmund W. Barnes (b. 1828) of New Orleans in 1856, and later Oscar Cheney (b. 1829) of Magnolia Plantation in Rapides Parish in 1869. According to periodicals published in the Alexandria Weekly Town Talk, she died a few years before her daughter Rosa's wedding to Martin Lacaze in 1895. References: Southern Reporter: Containing All the Decisions of the Supreme Courts of Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, vol. 17-18. St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1895, p. 319-321; Louisiana Reports: Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1852, vol. 7. St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1895. p. 672-674. Ibid. 1909, vol. 126. St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1911, p. 844-902; Louisiana Democrat 9 January 1895: 3; "Descendants of Nicholas Lanier". User Trees, Geneaology.com. Accessed: Nov. 11, 2016.

In overall very good condition. Painting exhibits evidence of professional restoration. It has been relined and has minor scattered areas of inpainting throughout, including near the edges, the proper left hand, the book, center of waist, elbow and edge of lace. There is some faint abrading to surface to the upper right corner and to the hair above the ear on the proper left side. Light surface soiling/accretions are present at the mid-left near the family plot. There is a pinprick-sized loss to the left canvas edge where it meets the frame, and very faint craquelure scattered throughout.