CHARLES-PAUL-JÉRÔME DE BREA

(1740 -1820)

Portrait on snuffbox, Louis XVI period

1781

Signed and dated on the right; From Bréa 1781

Watercolor and gouache, oval 4.8 x 3.8 cm.

Snuffbox in wood and bronze: 7.3 x 2.6 cm

Charming miniature brilliantly executed by De Bréa, signed and dated on the right: De Bréa 1781.

Bréa was a painter in oil, pastel, miniature and enamel. He mastered various printing techniques and traded in works of art.

He probably received his first artistic rudiments in his family and in 1771 he entered the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris. He formed a great friendship with Peter-Adolphe Hall, a miniature painter, to the point that the latter chose Bréa as the subject of his first attempt at enamel painting. The two artists influenced each other.

Bréa was an active portraitist of personalities of the revolutionary era: Mirabeau, Boissy d'Anglas, Condorcet, Chénier, Charlotte Corday, Robespierre, Mme Roland, Sieyés, Helen Marie Williams, Charles F. Lebrun.

Price: €1500

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, "Charles-Paul-Jerôme Bréa (1740-1820), his family and his work in miniature" in Bernd Pappe, Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, Gerrit Walczak (eds), European Portrait miniatures, artists, functions and collections , The Tansey miniatures Foundation, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg (Germany) 2014, pp. 167-178; Bénézit, Schidlof, Bouchard, Blattel, Lespinasse, Foster. Clouzot, Bouchot Saupique

MUSEUMS:

Louvre, Paris; Liaunig Museum, Neuhaus; coll. Tansey, Celle.; ENCOUNTER; National Museum of Ceramics Duca di Marina, Naples; National Museum in Stockholm.