Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp (1758-1820) - The Young Mother

Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp (Paris, 1758 - Beaumont-sur-Oise, 1820)

The Young Mother.

1791.

Watercolour gouache on paper.
Signed and dated on the tree trunk on the ground: 1791 Van Gorp.
Height: 31; Width: 22 cm.

This charming watercolour is set in a lush garden that serves as a backdrop for two seated young women. While one holds the parasol that shelters them, the other squeezes her breast from which milk is flowing. A statue of love completes the scene, seemingly shooting its arrow at the young mother.

Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp was admitted to the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1773, where he was Étienne Jeaurat's protégé. He was a boarder at the Académie for twelve years, during which time he became a pupil or fellow pupil of Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845). These artists were part of the same movement, as was Jean-Baptiste Mallet (1759-1835), to whom many of Van Gorp's watercolours have been attributed.
But his paintings, with their moralizing and sentimental overtones, set in a contemporary context, stand out from the works of his fellow artists. Some of his paintings, notably The Return of a Hussar to his Family, Salon of 1798, and The Lesson in Charity, 1806 (Saint-Omer, Musée de l'Hôtel Sandelin), were very successful and were reproduced in engravings.
Van Gorp exhibited at the Salon regularly from 1796 to 1819. It was only during the first period, until the beginning of the 19th century, that he exhibited genre scenes. Thereafter, he seemed to devote himself exclusively to portraiture.

Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp's tender genre scenes, like this watercolour, are to be compared with one of his works that has been reproduced in engraving, called Le déjeuner de Fanfan, which takes up the same theme of maternity, with a sentimental inflection.

Illustration:
Le déjeuner de Fanfan, print by Jean-Baptiste Mallet; under the direction of Louis-Marin Bonnet; after a gouache by Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp, circa 1789-1792.