Description:

PROVENANCE

Private Collector, Paris (acquired directly from the artist, his great-grandfather)

EXHIBITED: Paris, Salon, 1893, no. 474

Edouard-Jean Dambourgez's views of the giant Paris marketplace, Les Halles reveal that he was as keen an observer of the hustle and bustle of Parisian market life, with its images of bountiful foods from the fields and the sea, as were his better known French contemporaries, most notably Victor Gilbert (1847-1935), Norbert Goeneutte (1854-1894), François Bonvin (1817-1887) and Théodule Ribot (1823-1891). The construction of Les Halles dates to the twelfth century; it was renovated in the 1850s, when its trademark glass and iron buildings were added to provide shelter for the hundreds of market stalls. Les Halles became most famous when it served as the colorful backdrop for Emile Zola's Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris), which was first published in 1873. This was the third in a series of twenty novels, known as Les Rougon-Macquart, where Zola
explored the lives of various members of an extended family beginning with the Second Empire to the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871.
The protagonists in Le Ventre de Paris weave in and out of the stalls in Les Halles, with Zola devoting pages to vividly describing their wares from the glistening scales of the fresh-water fish to the creamy, ripe cheeses to the slaughtered livestock with "bellies yawning open." Artists such as Gilbert and Damborgez would have frequented les Halles in search of subjects, and in fact Bonvin also worked there as a meat inspector to earn a living, but Zola's popular prose also would have been known to them.

Dambourgez exhibited four paintings depicting Les Halles and Parisian food shops in the Salons of 1888, 1889, 1892 and 1893. For Les Halles
he was following in the tradition of Victor Gilbert, who was awarded a second class medal in the 1880 Salon, an honor which prompted the
state to purchase his Un coin de la halle aux poissons, le matin for 2500 francs. Dambourgez's 1893 Salon entry also takes place in Les Halles. Here, standing street peddlers sell their various sundries. On a tray are displayed golden brioches, next to a tall stack of colorful lampshades. An older man is draped with ribbons and holds two spools of thread. On the ground, clusters of sea sponges fill a large cloth; one can imagine the vendor transporting her bundle to and from Les Halles, an image akin to a fagot gatherer in Barbizon.

In 1888 and 1889, Dambourgez chose Parisian food shops as his setting. In Un Boutique de fromages, the proprietress proudly displays her carefully arranged assortments of cheeses and eggs. The reflections on the glass cloches over the golden Cantals and blue-veined Roqueforts are reminiscent of contemporary artists, Joseph Bail and Antoine Vollon. In Boutique de charcuterie, one is immediately reminded of Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère, a painting that Dambourgez could easily have seen in Paris when it was exhibited at the 1882 Salon or at the 1884 Manet retrospective at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Dambourgez reached critical acclaim in the Salon of 1891, when the state purchased his scene depicting cream and cheese sellers in Les Halles. The positive reception of this work resulted in Dambourgez making a smaller eplica

The quotations from Emile Zola's Belly of Paris, which accompany the illustration that follow, are taken from a new translation of Le Ventre de Paris by Ernest Alfred Bizetelly, (Green Integer, Copenhagen and Los Angeles, 2006).

"Then she took to selling pastry, cakes, cherry tarts, gingerbread, and thick yellow maize biscuits on wicker trays"

- Emile Zola
Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris