Minneapolis Institute of Art

Prince de Joinville welcomed by an English admiral aboard a British frigate

Raoul Dufy; after Constantin Guys

Date

1934–35

Medium

Gouache on paper

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy produced cheerful, colorful paintings and gouaches in the first-half of the twentieth century, often favoring scenes of fashionable women, uniformed officers, and summer holidays at the beach. This drawing was inspired by a work now lost by the 19th-century French artist and journalist Constantin Guys (1805–1892). In the age before photography, the press employed artists to illustrate current events in their publications. This scene represents Prince de Joinville (1818–1900), the third son of King Louis-Philippe I of France who was admiral in the French navy, embarking on an English ship. It may represent the prince's 1843 trip to England, when he traveled with his new wife Princess Francisca of Brazil to meet Queen Victoria. Guys was living in England at this time, working for the Illustrated London News and Punch. There is a larger related painting by Dufy, which was formerly in the collection of Gérard Oury. That work features the United Kingdom's standard Union Jack flag, whereas the Minneapolis gouache appears to feature the Queensland Separation Flag, a colony of the British Empire from 1859–1901. Dufy executed his homage to the lost work almost a century later, in 1934 or 1935. Dufy sought inspiration in the history of art throughout his career, producing works that were not copies but tributes to the artists he admired. There are some four works of different media and size related to Guy’s Prince de Joinville picture. Europe

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