Description:

Marie Adrien Persac (French/Louisiana, 1823-1873), "Elm Hall, Assumption Parish", 1859, gouache with collage on woven French-made paper laid on board laid on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled lower left, label with house history on backing paper, 17 3/4 in. x 23 1/2 in., framed, overall 25 3/4 in. x 31 3/4 in. x 1 in. Provenance: Ebenezer Eaton Kittredge; by descent in the family to the present owner. Ill.: Bacot, H. Parrott, Barbara SoRelle Bacot, Sally Kittredge Reeves, John Magill and John H. Lawrence. Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. Baton Ro uge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000, pp. 40-41.Note: The artist Marie Adrien Persac is known best for his gouache and watercolor paintings of south Louisiana plantations, often commissioned by the owners of these properties to hang in pride of place in their homes. "Elm Hall" of 1859 is one of the rare surviving known works of this genre and was included in the landmark monograph on the artist published in 2000 to accompany an exhibition held the same year at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art. Of Elm Hall’s origins the authors write: “The builder of Elm Hall typified the well-to-do Americans who came to Bayou Lafourche in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. Ebenezer Eaton Kittredge, M.D. (1799-1867), was a native of Walpole, New Hampshire, and was among the first of the Anglo-Americans to assemble large sugar plantations by buying the small holdings of the descendants of the original Acadian settlers.” Dr. Kittredge received medical training in New Hampshire before deciding to relocate. He settled first in Jefferson County, Mississippi about ten miles north of Natchez. He married his first wife, Martha Willis Green, there in 1820. The couple moved to Assumption Parish, Louisiana around 1828. Dr. Kittredge built a conventional style home for South Louisiana with a high basement ground level and living areas on the second story. When Martha died in 1836, the couple had six children. By 1839, Dr. Kittredge had re-married, and an additional eight children were born between 1840 and 1862. The original four-bay home had a side-hall plan; however, the house was expanded to eleven bays by 1859 when Persac depicted it. Bacot states: “Of Persac’s known gouaches of Louisiana plantation houses, this is the lone example that goes against the fashionable color scheme of the 1850s and early 1860s, white walls with green exterior blinds. The tan walls of Elm Hall are intended to represent stone.” Of additional interest is the inclusion of the red brick Gothic Revival church seen between the trees at the far left. The Kittredges, like most Anglo-American planters in the area, were Protestants, and in 1853, he donated a piece of Elm Hall’s land to the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. While Elm Hall was destroyed by fire in the early twentieth century, Christ Church, built in 1854, and its cemetery survived, now surrounded by the town of Napoleonville. The condition of this rare work, which has been professionally conserved, can be in part attributed to the artist himself: “Of all Persac’s gouaches, this picture has suffered the most from a combination of dampness and a glaze that Persac employed to heighten the color on dark areas of many of his paintings. The glaze causes the pigments to ‘cup’ and flake away. In 1975, the paper conservation team of R.R. Donnelly and Son in Chicago discovered while working on the LSU Museum of Art’s Persac of Hope Estate that the cupping could be relaxed and flattened through careful humidification. The flattened flakes could be readhered to the support by injecting glue from behind. The offending glaze could then be removed with distilled water.” Persac’s painting of Elm Hall is both a portrait of a grand family home and a detailed window onto life in the Antebellum South. Owned by the Kittredge family since its creation, this lot represents an incredibly rare opportunity to acquire a unique piece of Louisiana history. Ref.: Bacot, H. Parrott, Barbara SoRelle Bacot, Sally Kittredge Reeves, John Magill and John H. Lawrence. Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000, pp. 40-41.

  • Condition: If Condition is NOT stated in the description of the lot; the absence of a condition report does not indicate the lot is free of damage or condition issues. Available Condition Reports will appear as an additional image. Condition Reports and photographs may be requested on items until the Wednesday prior to the auction. To REQUEST A CONDITION REPORT, email [email protected]. Requests are only taken and provided in writing. Bid accordingly. All sales are final, no returns are accepted on the basis of condition.

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June 28, 2024 1:00 PM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US

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