Description:

Etienne Constant Carlin (French, 1808-1869, active Louisiana, 1850-1855), "Marie Louise Marthe de Blanc", 1852, oil on canvas, signed and dated mid-left, photograph of label inscribed "To be returned to / Ms. Alc. De Blanc / Martinville, LA" attached to backing board, 36 in. x 28 3/4 in., framed with artist and title plaque, overall 43 in. x 36 in. x 3 in. Ill.: Cable, George W. Strange True Stories of Louisiana (Illustrated Edition). Dodo Press, 2006, cover. Note: Neal Auction would like to thank R. Paul Fitch for his assistance with the cataloguing of these lots. Artist, Etienne Constant Carlin traveled from his ancestral home in Clermont, France arriving in New York City on July 4, 1850. He stayed only a short time in New York before traveling to Southern Louisiana, surprisingly bypassing New Orleans to settle in Bayou Teche, the home of Carlin patron, prosperous sugar planter and state senator Gabriel Laclaire Fuselier. Carlin had frequent commissions and painted numerous portraits of the Fuselier and Frère families among other prominent members of the “Foreign French” community, so called to differentiate themselves from the French-Canadian Cajuns that also populated the Bayou Teche region. Carlin lived and painted portraits of wealthy patrons in the area from 1850 to 1855. His extant portraits speak to his position as a much sought-after artist of original portraiture but additionally as an artist commissioned to copy portraits that were made by his contemporaries and predecessors. Marie Louise Marthe de Blanc was born in Natchitoches in 1777 to Commandant Louis-Charles de Blanc and Elizabeth D’Erneville. De Blanc was a Commandant of the Post of Natchitoches, a post his father held before him. He served as Captain of the Second Company of Natchitoches and fought under General Galvez in the American Revolution. Although it is uncertain when, De Blanc moved his family from northwest Louisiana to the Attakapas country in the southwest area of Louisiana and served as the Commandant of the Post des Attakapas. Carlin painted the portraits of Marie Louise Marthe de Blanc and Commandant de Blanc in the 1850s after de Blanc had passed (1826) and Marie Louise Marthe was an elderly woman. The style of portraiture is altogether unlike that of Carlin and closer to the style of portraits painted by José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza, foremost painter in Spanish Colonial Louisiana from 1785-1802. A period more consistent with the age of sitters Commandant Louis-Charles de Blanc and his daughter Marie Louise Marthe de Blanc in their Carlin copy portraits. It is likely, based on the years the works were completed, that Carlin was commissioned to paint the copy portraits in approximately 1852 and then commissioned to draw the pastel portrait of the young Corrine Mathilde Antoinette de Blanc great-granddaughter of Commandant de Blanc in 1855 when the sitter was five years of age. Ref.: R. Paul Fitch, III and Claudia Kheel. “Etienne Constant Carlin (1808-1869) Le Peinture de la Petit Paris en Louisiane : 1850-1855)". May 27, 2015.

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November 16, 2023 1:00 PM CST
New Orleans, LA, US

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