As part of the sale dedicated to antique paintings and drawings, historical souvenirs, furniture and art objects, PIASA auction house is offering for sale on Thursday, June, 4th, 2020 a selection of sketchbooks and drawings by the painter Isidore Pils (1815-1875).
From the age of 11, Isidore Pils trained in the studio of the painter and member of the Academy of Fine Arts Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760-1832). Winner of the Prix de Rome in 1838 in the category of history painting, the painter will spend his stay at the Villa Medici, then directed by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).
Isidore Alexandre Augustin PILS (1813 -1875)
Sketchbook of 1873 including 16 various studies : interior scene, painter, woman and children, etc.
Black chalk
4,7 x 7,2 in (Sketchbook dimensions)
Stricken by tuberculosis, the young man went to Ischia to convalesce on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea in the summer of 1839. This stay allowed him to visit the cities of Naples, Venice and Florence. The first paintings he produced during this period were religiously inspired. When the Crimean War broke out, Isidore Pils asked to follow the French troops. This first experience will orient his painting towards military themes. He reinvested the war iconography of France by painting, for example, Rouget de L'Isle singing the Marseillaise for the first time in 1792.
Isidore Alexandre Augustin PILS (1813 - 1875)
Study of a forearm
black chalk, stump, heightened by white chalk on paper
11,8 X 18,5 in
This painting was a great success. The artist multiplied the portraits of officers and marshals, such as that of Marshal Oudinot, now kept at the Musée de l'Armée aux Invalides. Attracted by the East, which this mid-19th century literary and pictorial fantasy, he embarks for Algeria where, despite a rather precarious state of health, he will remain for nearly two years. After being appointed professor of painting at the École des Beaux-arts de Paris, he entered the Academy in 1867.
The siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1871, then by the Versailles during the tragic episode of the Paris Commune, offered him an inexhaustible repertoire of motifs.
Isidore Alexandre Augustin PILS ( 1813-1875)
An album dated 1838, (the year in which
Pils goes to Italy), comprising 36 studies
Black pencil
Dated on the first cover page by pen and
brown ink "1838"
11 × 15cm
Estimation : 800 / 1200 euros
The selection offered for sale by PIASA on June 4, 2020 particularly honours the sketchbooks of drawings and sketches that Isidore Pils made around the years 1820-1830. Following the example of this album dated 1838, we find studies of studio interiors, character studies, several studies by Italian painters including Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Titian and Alessandro Allori.
Attentive to the landscapes that surround him, the artist also depicts the surrounding Roman countryside and buildings such as the famous Castel Sant'Angelo. He fills the pages of his self-portrait notebooks full of flavour.
