Jan-Marie-Constantin VAN BEERS (Lierre, 1852 - Fay-aux-Loges, 1927) The Screen or Chatteries Mahogany panel Signed at the bottom center: "JAN VAN BEERS 32,3 x 23,7 cm Frame : In rosewood with copper and mother of pearl inlay Exhibition: Exhibition of the works of Jan Van Beers, Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, 1888, n° 50. Bibliography : - Journal général de l'imprimerie et de la librairie, vol. 79, 1890, p. 28. - P. de Mont, Jan Van Beers, Vlaamsche schilders der negentiende eeuw, 1901, p. 76, reproduced on p. 82. Our painting justifies the description given to Van Beers as "Meissonier des dames" (A. Shaw, Jan van Beers, Review or reviews and wolds'work, March 1894, p. 354). Having the taste of the small format and seeking "the shocking situations, cultivating (...) the paradox and the anachronism" (E. Bouvy, A propos d'art humoristique, Revue philomatique de Bordeaux, November 1, 1907, vol. 10, p. 525), the artist painted several Pierrettes. For him it is not a question of a literary or humble theme but of showing transvestite characters. He painted a portrait of his girlfriend Georgette who resembles our Pierrette (private collection) with the same costume and commissioned Nadar's studio to take photographs of Madame Néri, an actress at the Bouffes in Paris, to serve as a model, which is certainly the case here. Mentioning another Pierrette, the critic Pierre de Labrosse offers a definition of Van Beers' work: "The fantasy of his figures is based on [...] an exact and not without irony knowledge of the strings that pull the features of human puppets. It is not in the modelling of the features that Van Beers seeks the character of his figures. [...] It is most often the wink of an eye, the line of a mouth, the bend of an eyebrow, rendered in their essentiality, that describe the effect, simple, elementary, but acute. It is a pleasant exaggeration, and that is all. (Jan Van Beers, La Revue illustrée, 1885, second half, p. 786).