Simon Saint-Jean
(Lyon 1808 – 1860 Ecully)
‘A Bouquet of Roses, Daisies and Violets with a Butterfly on a Mossy bank’, 1850
Oil on canvas: 49 x 62 cm
signed and dated ‘Saint Jean 1850’ (lower left)
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Notes
The French artist Simon Saint-Jean was born in 1808. He studied at the Art Academy of Lyon, where he was a student of Augustin Alexandre Thierrat. He won his first prize, a golden medal, for one of his flower pieces. After finishing school, he found a position in the silk design workshop of François Lepage. Saint-Jean also exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, where he was awarded several times. In 1837, he married Camille Belmont, daughter of a wealthy silk manufacturer.
Perhaps the most beloved painter of the School of Lyon, Simon Saint-Jean quickly established a solid international reputation as a flower painter with an international clientele in Belgium, The Netherlands, Russia and the United States. Distinguished patrons included Baron Scipion Corvisart (adopted son of Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, physician of Napoleon), the Rothschilds as well as friends of art dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel.
Work in museum collections:
Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), The Wallace Collection (London), Musée des beaux-arts (Lyon), Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo), Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg), Louvre (Paris), Musée des beaux-arts Rouen, Musée Paul Dini (Villefranche-sur-Saôn).
Provenance
- Goupil & Co., M. Knoedler Successors, New York.
- Henry C. Gibson, Philadelphia (purchased from the above, September 1871 for $2500).
- The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1892 (bequest from the above).
- Christie’s, New York, 2002 (sold on behalf of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in order to benefit its American Acquisitions Fund).
- Bies Art Gallery
- Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Beneficent Connoisseurs (Henry C. Gibson Collection), 1974, no. 93.
- New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, A Portrait of Young America, 1975, no. 75.
Literature
- Strahan, ed., Art Treasures of America, New York, circa 1880, vol. I, p. 80.