Guillaume GUILLON LETHIERE (1760-1832) Boissy d'Anglas saluting the head of the deputy Féraud Oil on canvas, original stretcher and frame Signed lower centre : Le Thiere Marked on the back of the canvas: A LA PALETTE D'OR / ancienne maison / REY / BRULLON / Succr de M. DELARUE / Rue de l'Arbre Sec / N°46 / A PARIS 80 x 105 cm Framed in a Restoration style frame, gilded Provenance : -Post-death inventory of the artist dated 23 July 1832 among the objects bequeathed to Mélanie d'Hervilly (Archives nationales, MC/ET/XCIX/887) -d'Hervilly sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 20-21 February 1878, n°75 (sold to Mr Lainé) -M.L.D sale, Hôtel Drouot, 15 June 1910, no. 40 -Boissy d'Anglas family, by descent. Bibliography : -F., "Concours pour le troisième tableau destiné à la Chambre des Députés", Journal des Artistes, 3 April 1831, p.258. -F., "Concours pour le troisième tableau destiné à la Chambre des Députés. (Deuxième article)", Journal des Artistes, 10 April 1831, p. 272. -Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, L'État et les artistes: de la restauration à la monarchie de Juillet (1815-1833), Paris, Flammarion, p.206 à 208. -Catalogue of the exhibition Guillon Lethière Né à la Guadeloupe, Clark Art Intitute, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2024, p.79, 378, 382 (work lost) In order to decorate the wall of the Salle des Séances of the Chambre des députés in the Palais Bourbon, a competition was organised by the State in September 1830. The iconographic programme was entrusted to the Minister of the Interior, Guizot, who chose three themes, corresponding to three separate paintings, illustrating the legislative history of the French Revolution. Guillaume Guillon-Lethière took part in the competition for one of the three subjects: Boissy d'Anglas saluting the head of the deputy Féraud. He submitted this sketch alongside fifty-three other entrants, including Eugène Delacroix (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and Nicolas Sébastien Maillot (Reims, Musée Saint-Denis), Joseph Auguste Tellier (Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon), Felix Auvray (Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Alphonse Roehn (Tarbes, Musée Massey), Thomas Degeorge (Clermont-Ferrand, Musée Bargoin) and Joseph-Marie Court (sold at Hôtel Drouot in 2008). It was Auguste Vinchon who won the competition with his sketch, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours. The scene depicted in our painting takes place in the Salle de la Convention Nationale, which corresponds to the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries, in fact a theatre. On 1st Prairial III (20th May 1795), starving Parisians invaded the Convention. Féraud, deputy for the Hautes-Pyrénées, opposed the riot and was shot dead by a pistol. His head was cut off and presented to the president of the session, Boissy d'Anglas, at the end of a pike. On 10 April 1831, the Journal des Artistes published a review of the competition in which our painting was explicitly described: "M. Lethière, the only academician who took part in the competition, is distinguished by a beautiful and great disposition and by an understanding that belongs only to a man of talent. But, because of certain school habits, it was necessary to give the rebels of Year 4 a half-Roman costume and some academic poses. M. Lethière, no doubt knowingly, committed an anachronism by giving his deputies a sort of antique cloak and a rather picturesque headdress, which were not adopted until two years later, under the Directoire. One of the secretaries covered his face with his cloak, as in the painting of Brutus, so as not to see Ferraud's head. Boissy d'Anglas's gesture is equivocal...". Our painting is one of the last works by Lethière, who died a year after this sketch was presented. The artist, considered around 1800 to be a rival of David, was confronted here with the painters of the young Romantic generation. It is similar to La Fayette presenting Louis-Philippe to the people of Paris (circa 1830-1831, Tokyo, Fudji Art Museum). The labels and catalogue of the current Guillon Lethière exhibition at the Musée du Louvre emphasise its new vitality in the Restoration years, noting that "at seventy years of age, the artist was still in his teens". note "at seventy years of age, his ability to adapt to the imagery of a new regime and to follow the stylistic evolution of history painting with contemporary subjects".