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Lot 307
Description:
Adolph D. Rinck (French, c. 1810-1875, active New Orleans, 1840-1871), "Portrait of John Woodhouse Audubon (1812-1862)", oil on canvas, signed "ARinck" and dated "1840" upper left, 27 in. x 22 in., in an antique frame.
- Provenance: Provenance: James B. Pelletier Gallery, 34 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, sold 13 August 1900 to C. F. Gunther of Chicago; Judge Nathaniel Sears and Laura Davidson Sears, Sears Gallery of Fine Arts, Elgin Academy, Elgin, Illinois, c. 1924-1967; unlocated auction sale of Sears Gallery deaccessioning, probably Chicago, c. 1967, no. 1270, as "restored"; Kathleen Pari, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; consigned by her to DeLind Fine Art, Inc. Milwaukee, 9 June 2000 ~ Note: This essentially unknown painting is of considerable interest to the portraiture of the Audubon family. It represents the younger son of the great French-American naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851); its nearly exact replication is a well-known miniature, also by Rinck, in the New-York Historical Society. That w rk, however, is considerably later than this original painting (it has traditionally been dated to the mid-1840s); and that Rinck miniature of "John Woodhouse Audubon" in New York is a pendant to a signed Rinck miniature representing this sitter's father, "John James Audubon," now in the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport. Rinck's signed "J.J. Audubon" miniature in Shreveport, in turn, is an interpretation of a famous London engraving of 1835 by C. Turner, after a celebrated miniature of the great naturalist by Frederick Cruickshank of 1831 The entire Audubon family had moved to New York by October 1839, purchasing a house where within a month John Woodhouse was already hard at work o his reductions for the new edition of The Birds of America. In mid-February 1840 the young artist and his ailing bride passed briefly through Baltimore, Norfolk, and Wilmington en route to Charleston, where it was hoped she might recuperate; but sadly she died in September 1840 John Woodhouse Audubon returned to New York n late October. Rinck himself is documented only to have arrived in New Orleans by December 9,1840, presumably from Paris (where he had been a student of Delaroche). However, it is possible that Rinck met J.W. Audubon in either New York in the beginning of 1840 or in Charleston later that year, if Rinck came to America through either of these ports. Rinck must then have retained a reduction or sketch of it, which he would have used for his later paired miniatures of both father and son. Special thanks to the New York Historical Society and the R.W. Norton Art Gallery for their research assistance. References: G.C. Groce & D.H. Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America (New-York Historical Society, 1957), p. 537; J.A. Mahé & R. McCaffrey, Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists (Historic New Orleans Collection, 1987); Francis Hobart Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist (New York, 1917), vol. 1, frontispiece, p. 394, v. 2, pp. 199-218; Howard Corning, ed., Letters of J.J. Audubon, 1826-1840 (Boston, 1930), v. 2, pp. 223-231; Richard Rhodes. J.J. Audubon (New York, 2004), pp. 410-16
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October 11, 2008 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US
Neal Auction Company
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