"Flowers and Autumn Fruits", 1845.

Oil on canvas signed and dated lower right.

Dimensions: with frame, 73 x 84 cm.  

"Is it painted on porcelain or on paper?" »In« Complete catalog of the salon of 1846 annotated by A.-H. Delaunay, editor-in-chief of the Journal des Artistes, Paris, Bureau du journal des Artistes, 1846. 

Adèle Hippolyte Lallemand is a French artist born in Paris. She lives and trains in the capital. A student of Belloc, she specialized in still life painting. She is dedicated to the precise and faithful representation of the things of nature.

Flowers and seasonal fruits are painted with watercolors and oils on canvas. Apart from the floral art in which she excels, we know of a few portraits of relatives ("The happy one of the day, Portrait of Mlle Éléonore N ...", 1845).

Lallemand exhibited regularly in the Paris Salons from 1835 to 1870. His quality shipments were always praised by the critics. "Is it painted on porcelain or on paper?" », Asks AH Delaunay, editor-in-chief of the« Journal des Artistes », in 1846.

Still life is a genre of rare complexity. From the Italian Renaissance to the French academicism of the XVII th century, the genre is not considered. In 1667, Félibien gave a lecture on the hierarchy of painting genres at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

He speaks of still life as a pictorial sub-genre, a poor mental exercise compared to the intellectual solicitation that religious, mythological and historical painting supposes.

Since the Renaissance, art, and in particular that of our artist, has lived on the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci: art is "cosa Mental", or "thing of the mind". It must tend to awaken our intellect and uplift our soul. It is with this in mind that the art of still life, a receptacle of spirituality, is developing in the Netherlands.  

The Dutch Golden Age brought the genre of still life to its nobility; Protestant Flanders is the backdrop for the success of the greatest painters. Each sub-genre of still life has a name; from the representation of breakfast products to that of luxurious dishes exported from the colonies.

Adèle Hippolyte Lallemand immerses herself in the Flemish heritage and plays with the codes of academic representation. The bouquets are cleverly arranged and disturbed. The fruits and flowers are organized on the canvas so that the viewer's eye can catch it in all its clarity.

The bright colors and the attention paid to their harmony are subordinate to the artist's law of drawing. His gaze is precise, his hand solid, his brush of great finesse.

The artist's wit consists in bringing still life to life with flying insects. For the Italian Renaissance, the fly, the bee and the butterfly have a very strong symbolism. Placed on the lips or the face of a man, it represents genius, placed on a flower, it represents his ephemeral condition and, by extension, the human condition of the spectator.