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Brother Philippe's Geese

Brother Philippe's Geese

(French, 1699–1749)
about 1745
Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas
Dimensions29.5 x 21.9cm (11 5/8 x 8 5/8in.)
Framed: 40 x 33.3 x 3.2 cm (15 3/4 x 13 1/8 x 1 1/4 in.)
Credit LineGift of Colnaghi USA, Ltd.
Accession number1983.593
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsPaintings
Collections
Description
This painting takes its subject from a fable recounted by the 17th‑century poet Jean de la Fontaine. Philippe takes his son into the marketplace for the first time, where the sight of a beautifully dressed young woman arouses the youth’s curiosity. When his father sarcastically explains that the women are a type of bird called “geese,” the son delightedly replies that they should bring one home to fatten it up. One of these “geese,” dressed in white, has been identified as a portrait of Virginia Parker Hunt, the English wife of the French marine painter Claude Joseph Vernet.
ProvenanceBy about 1920, Baron Eugène-Napoléon Beyens (b. 1855 - d. 1934), Brussels (?). Private collection, England; December 10, 1980, anonymous ("property of a nobleman") sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 6 [see note 1], probably to Bruno Meissner, Zurich; 1981, sold by Meissner to P. and D. Colnaghi, London and New York; 1983, gift of Colnaghi to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 7, 1983)

NOTES:
[1] In a letter from Arabella Bailey of Sotheby's to Helen Hall of the MFA (March 13, 1985), this painting and its companion (1983.592) are said to have been purchased by the consignor's father "probably in Paris before the 1st World War."