Bégnine GAGNERAUX (Dijon, 1756 - Florence, 1795 ) Head of a white horse Canvas Signed and dated 'B. Gagneraux. 1787.' lower left Face of a white horse, canvas, signed and dated, by B. Gagneraux 29.33 x 23.70 in. 74.5 x 60.2 cm Provenance: Mentioned in the inventory after the artist's death in Florence, drawn up on 2 September 1795, no. 10: "Two paintings on canvas with two horse heads, gilded borders, 1 fathom wide and 1 fathom and 1/3 high"; Probably in the collection of the artist's nephew, the architect Bénigne Claude Alfred Chevrot, known as Alfred Chevrot (1820-1895), son of Agathe Gagneraux, daughter of the artist, in 1846; The house then passed down through the generations to its current owner; Private collection, Ile-de-France Exhibitions: Explanations of the works presented at the exhibition of the Société des amis des arts de Dijon at the Musée de la ville, Dijon, 1849, under no. 273 Bibliography: Probably Henri Baudot, "Eloge historique de Bénigne Gagnereaux", Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, arts et belles lettres de l'Académie de Dijon, 1845-1846, p. 216-217 Birgitta Sandström, Bénigne Gagneraux, Edsbruk, 1981, p. 256 Birgitta Sandström, Bénigne Gagneraux 1756-1795: éducation, inspiration, œuvre, doctoral thesis at Stockholm University, 1981, pp. 136-137, no. 10b, reproduced fig. 37 Pierre Georgel, Catherine Gras, Monique Geiger, Marguerite Guillaume, Bénigne Gagneraux (1756-1795) un peintre bourguignon dans la Rome néo-classique, cat. exp. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, 1983, p. 17 Sylvain Laveissière et al, Bénigne Gagneraux (1756-1795), un pittore francese nella Roma di Pio VI, cat. exp. Rome, Galleria Borghese, p. 111, repr. fig.17 (notice by Sylvain Laveissière) Our painting is one of six extraordinary "portraits" of horses that define Bénigne Gagneraux as the great painter in this field in the second half of the eighteenth century, between Stubbs and Géricault. At the beginning of 1786, the States of Burgundy commissioned two large canvases from our artist, La Bataille de Seneffe and Le Passage du Rhin à Tholhuis (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, for the former), for a series of six large paintings recounting the victories of the Grand Condé, with the aim of decorating their palace in Dijon. Their ambition was to pay tribute to the family of the governor of the province, Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé (1736-1818), seventh Prince de Condé. The Revolution probably put an end to this undertaking, limiting it to two completed compositions. In preparation for the tumultuous cavalry charges depicted in these two works, the artist produced several studies of horses in 1787: Horse Frightened at the Sight of a Snake (Dijon, Musée Magnin), Saddled Horse Seen in Short Cut in a Landscape (private collection), Saddled Horse Seen in Profile (Galerie Jean-Luc Baroni et Emmanuel Marty de Cambiaire) and Head of a Black Horse (private collection), the closest to our painting in terms of size and identical positioning. To justify his delay in delivering Passage du Rhin, the artist wrote to François Devosge, then founder of the school of drawing and director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, on 5 January 1792: "it is the particular studies of the horse that have delayed me ... I have made some very serious ones". From the outset, he probably envisaged them as autonomous paintings that could be sold to amateurs. Two of them, showing whole horses, were intended for, and perhaps delivered to, "Monsieur Calandrin", none other than the Genevan banker François Calandrini (1729-1801). A pupil of François Devosge in Dijon, Bénigne Gagneraux was pensioned off in Rome, at the expense of the province of Burgundy, in 1776. He decided to stay in the Italian city and built up a clientele in France, Italy and then Europe, receiving commissions from King Gustav III of Sweden. At the time of our painting, in 1787, he was at the height of his reputation with the creation of the ceiling on the subject of Jupiter and Antiope for the Villa Borghese, which was unanimously admired at the time. After the anti-French and anti-revolutionary riots in the Eternal City in 1793, Gagneraux took refuge in Florence. With its presence, the look that seems to evoke human emotion, and its tight framing, our painting foreshadows Géricault's famous Tête de cheval blanc (Head of a White Horse) (Musée du Louvre), dated 1814-1815, which, surprisingly, was not painted from life but inspired by an engraving by Gilles Demarteau after Carle Vernet (1800). Bégnine GAGNERAUX (Dijon, 1756 - Florence, 1795 ) 74.5 x 60.2 cm Our painting is one of the six extraordinary "portraits" of horses that define Bénigne Gagneraux as the great painter in this field in the second half of the 18th century, between Stubbs and Géricault. At the beginning of 1786, the States of Burgundy commissioned two large canvases from our artist, La Bataille de Seneffe and Le Passage du Rhin à Tholhuis (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, for the former), for a series of six large paintings recounting the victories of the Grand Condé, with the aim of decorating their palace in Dijon. Their ambition was to pay tribute to the family of the governor of the province, Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé (1736-1818), seventh Prince de Condé. The Revolution probably put an end to this undertaking, limiting it to two completed compositions. In preparation for the tumultuous cavalry charges depicted in these two works, the artist produced several studies of horses in 1787: Horse Frightened at the Sight of a Snake (Dijon, Musée Magnin), Saddled Horse Seen in Short Cut in a Landscape (private collection), Saddled Horse Seen in Profile (Galerie Jean-Luc Baroni et Emmanuel Marty de Cambiaire) and Head of a Black Horse (private collection), the closest to our painting in terms of size and identical positioning. To justify his delay in delivering Passage du Rhin, the artist wrote to François Devosge, then founder of the school of drawing and director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, on 5 January 1792: "it is the particular studies of the horse that have delayed me ... I have made some very serious ones". From the outset, he probably envisaged them as autonomous paintings that could be sold to amateurs. Two of them, showing whole horses, were intended for, and perhaps delivered to, "Monsieur Calandrin", none other than the Genevan banker François Calandrini (1729-1801). A pupil of François Devosge in Dijon, Bénigne Gagneraux was pensioned off to Rome, at the expense of the province of Burgundy, in 1776. He decided to stay in the Italian city and built up a clientele in France, Italy and then Europe, receiving commissions from King Gustav III of Sweden. At the time of our painting, in 1787, he was at the height of his reputation with the creation of the ceiling on the subject of Jupiter and Antiope for the Villa Borghese, which was unanimously admired at the time. After the anti-French and anti-revolutionary riots in the Eternal City in 1793, Gagneraux took refuge in Florence. With its presence, the look that seems to evoke human emotion, and its tight framing, our painting foreshadows Géricault's famous Tête de cheval blanc (Head of a White Horse) (Musée du Louvre), dated 1814-1815, which, surprisingly, was not painted from life but was inspired by an engraving by Gilles Demarteau after Carle Vernet (1800).