Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)

Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)

Chevalier Férréol de Bonnemaison

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print records a painting by Ferréol de Bonnemaison exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1800. The title was listed simply as "Étude d’après nature" (study after nature), but the scene was described in the catalogue as "an old woman and her grandson, after having lost their fortune, and then their friends, finding themselves unable to earn a living, are constrained to implore passers-by for pity." Ripped posters on the wall behind them advertising a concert and a masked ball allude to loss and gayer times. The subject reflects an unsettled period of French history in the years after the French revolution and during the early rise of Napoleon. The artist is asking for the viewer’s pity for members of the wealthy classes who saw their fortune and their place in society dramatically reduced.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)Idée du tableau le plus touchant du Salon de l’an 9 (La Pauvre rentière)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.