Achille Etna MICHALLON (Paris 1796 - 1822) Rocks in Brittany Oil on paper. On the back, stamped on the frame. 27 x 42 cm Provenance : - Probably Charles-Pierre de L'Espine (1750-1821), Paris. - Former Lachèvre collection, architect from Rouen. - Chez de Bayser, 1973-74, as Valenciennes (purchased in 1973 with a set of twenty-four other studies from a Rouen antique dealer). - Former Madame Marie-Madeleine Aubrun collection, posthumous sale, 1998, same as Valenciennes. Exhibition: - Galerie de Bayser, Paris, 1973-1974, "P.H. de Valenciennes" exhibition, no. 14, as Valenciennes. - Kiener Chantal, "Catalogue peintures et dessins", 2013, as in Valenciennes. Bibliography: G. Lacambre, Paysages de Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes : problèmes d'attribution, SHAF, March 16, 2019, as in Michallon. Madame Geneviève Lacambre in a study presented on March 16, 2019, has reattributed to Michallon some of the oils on paper from the set exhibited at the Galerie de Bayser in 1973-74 as Valenciennes. Several sites around Saint-Malo had been identified by René Le Bihan. According to Madame Lacambre, Michallon, who travelled to Brittany in 1816, was responsible for the studies taken from nature during a trip to Brittany. It is also a fact that the de L'Espine family owned studies by both Michallon and Valenciennes. No trace of Valenciennes' trip to Brittany has survived, but that doesn't mean he didn't visit this beautiful country. We do know of an oil on canvas by Michallon, signed and dated 1816, in which Mont-Saint-Michel appears in the background. Madame Lacambre draws a distinction between the studies from the background exhibited at the Galerie de Bayser, which she gave to Valenciennes in comparison with the set in the Louvre, and the studies painted on loose paper, which she returned to Michallon.