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Paul Grandhomme initially trained as an apprentice jeweler but developed a strong interest in enamels after reading Claudius Popelin's history of enameling while working as a librarian during the Franco-Prussian war. His enamel creations were at first unsuccessful, though he later found an audience and supplied Parisian jeweler Boucheron small enamel plaques to be inserted into exquisite jewelry. Grandhomme also collaborated with jeweler Lucien Falize, and silversmith Jules Brateau with whom he made the celebrated gold and enamel 'Secret' casket now in the Musee des art decoratifs, Paris (inv. 17461).
From 1877, Grandhomme worked with his ex-pupil Alfred Garnier, and together they produced enamels, winning a gold medal at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. They created approximately fourteen works after paintings by symbolist Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), two of these, Sapho, 1895, and Hélène, 1893, are in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris (OAO 1169 and OAO 192); another, Hercules and the Twelve Labors, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011.257).
The present work is after Moreau's watercolor Allegory of Fable, painted between 1879-1885 as part of a series commissioned by art collector Antony Roux to illustrate a new edition of Jean de la Fontaine's fables. Roux originally commissioned several fashionable artists of the period, including Doré, Lami, Baudry, Derôme, Ziem, and Moreau, and exhibited over 150 watercolors at the Cercle des Aquarellistes, held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1881. When Moreau's paintings were the most admired, Roux decided to commission a further thirty-nine illustrations, thus assigning Moreau the task of illustrating the entire work. Allegory of Fable was intended as the frontispiece to the publication. It shows a partially-draped nude female personification of Fable, a whisk in her hand, and holding a comedy mask, carried by a hippogriff, symbols that might allude to Moreau's attitude towards fables - the didactic function disguised by comedy. The use of nude females and mythological creatures is not uncommon in Moreau's work, and this particular subject would have been pleasing to Grandhomme who is known to have drawn inspiration from the female nude.
Roux's edition of Fontaine's Fables was never published, and Moreau's paintings were subsequently acquired by Miriam Alexandrine de Rothschild (1884-1965), though almost half of them were lost during the Nazi era. The remaining paintings are featured as the exhibition, Gustave Moreau: The Fables, displayed at Waddesdon Manor, and at the Musee National de Gustave Moreau, Paris, both in 2020.
Literature
For a discussion on Moreau and his watercolors for the Fables, see Carey, Juliet Gustave Moreau: The Fables, Paul Holberton, 2020