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Description: signed with monogram: PB and inscribed: opéra, in black chalk

black chalk heightened with white chalk on pinkish-brown paper

PROVENANCE

Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5 May 1957, lot 3
EXHIBITED

Zürich, Galerie Kurt Meissner, Hundert Zeichnungen aus Fünf Jahrhunderten, 1984, p. 42, no. 37
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

J. Foucart and L.-A. Prat, Les peintures de l'Opéra de Paris de Baudry à Chagall, Paris 1980, fig. 39
CATALOGUE NOTE

This is a preparatory study for the figure in a medallion representing Music in Italy, part of Baudry's decorations in the foyer of the Paris Opéra. Baudry was well-established as a portrait painter and much patronised by the French State by the late 1850s, when he began to undertake decorative commissions. In 1863 Charles Garnier, the architect of the Paris Opéra, commissioned him to decorate the foyer, on which he worked between 1866 and 1874, having first travelled extensively in Italy to study Michelangelo and other artists.

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Dimensions: 341by 250 mm