Jean-Louis-Ernest MEISSONIER (Lyon, 1815 - Paris, 1891) The Painter at his easel, 1852 Oak panel Monogrammed and dated lower left: "EM 1852 21,8 x 16 cm Provenance: - Baroness Mathilde de Rothschild (1832-1924), Frankfurt am Main. - Marion and Hans-Peter Bühler, Munich. Exhibitions: - Frankfurter Kunstschätze eine Auswahl der schönsten und wertvollsten Gemälde des 19. Jahrhunderts aus Frankfurter Privatbesitz. Austellung im Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, 20 July-30 September 1913, no. 55, p. 16, reproduced (on loan from Baroness Mathilde de Rothschild). - Von Corot bis Monet. Werke der Schule von Barbizon und ihrer Nachfolge aus der Sammlung Marion und Hans-Peter Bühler, Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste, 22 November 1995-7 January 1996, no. 31, p. 40, reproduced pl. 27. After a period in the studio of Jules Poter and then in that of Léon Cognier, Meissonier took part in the Salon in 1834 with a pastiche of the Dutch of the Golden Age, A Visit to the Burgomaster. He abandoned his illustrative work because the tiny panels he exhibited, Drinkers and Smokers, brought him unprecedented success. He was awarded a prize at the Universal Exhibition of 1855 on a par with Ingres and Delacroix. Meissonier presented for the first time A Painter in his Studio at the Salon of 1843, a subject of which he produced numerous versions that he mainly placed at the time of Louis XIII or Louis XIV. A variation of our painting, painted in 1852, was done four years later in which the painter leaves his seat to an amateur admiring a painting placed on the easel (Amateur de tableaux chez un peintre, private collection). A sketch, belonging to the collector Secrétan (oil on panel, Secrétan sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 8-10 June 1899, no. 59), shows the transition between the two compositions.