Laurent Jules MARLET
(
active in the middle of the 19th century

)The model

in the artist's studioSigned
and dated lower
left: J Marlet 1852 38 x 46 cm
Provenance
:

anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot,8 December 1993 (me Briest), n°54



This scene illustrates an amusing moment in the Bohemian life of the 1850s. Around a stove, a young woman is making a pied-de-nez with an opium pipe in her other hand; in front of her, the painter is holding a cigarette instead of the traditional brush. On the wall are copies of Rubens' Coronation of Mary of Medici and Thomas Couture's Miser, as well as studio plasterwork with reproving expressions.