Barthélemy-Louis MENDOUZE (1773-1852) - Lot 15

Barthélemy-Louis MENDOUZE (1773-1852) Portrait of a young officer Original canvas and stretcher, signed and dated upper left: "Mendouze depingebat anno 1810". (Old restorations, small missing parts.) Height 60 cm; Width: 49.7 cm Little studied, the painter was a close friend of the David family and particularly of Jules David, son of the famous Louis David. The two traveled to Greece together. In 1818, Mendouze replaced Jules David as French teacher at Adamantios Coray's Lycée du Gymnase de Chio (see Jean-Antoine Caravolas, "Charles-Louis-Jules David, professeur de français à Chio", Documents pour l'histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde, 28 2002, 87-101). On his return to France under the Restoration, he became a lithographer and printer, illustrating and publishing, among other works, the Aeneid, Camoëns and Lamartine's Méditations (1823). Another portrait of a man signed by this painter, located and dated in Smyrna in 1823, is known. The number 5 on the buttons of the uniform possibly refers to an officer of the 5th Dragoon Regiment. Expert : Cabinet TURQUIN