Zacharie

Philippe Zacharie, who spent most of his career in Rouen, is a little-known painter, despite his considerable production and regular participation in the Paris Salon. The tribute paid to him on his death by the painter and journalist Georges Dubosc remains the main source on the life and work of this « great and modest artist ». Most of his works are kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen.

Zacharie was trained at the municipal drawing school in Rouen by his teachers Gustave Morin (best known for his drawings of scenes and landscapes in Normandy) and Antoine Guillemet (a landscape painter). There he met the painter Albert Lebourg, the illustrator Henry Somm, and the sculptor Alphonse Guilloux. From 1870 onwards, he sent works to the Paris Salon, where he exhibited regularly until 1914. Apart from a few portraits, he mainly exhibited Parisian genre scenes, booksellers, concierges and street scenes. La Femme aux pigeons (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), for example, was a great success in 1883. In 1888, his Femme au bain was caricatured in Le « Salon humoristique illustré » (p. 11) in the Journal amusant. In 1894, his studio, housed in the former drawing school in the Musée des Antiquités, caught fire and he lost a large number of works.

Zacharie also devoted himself to portraiture; we know of charcoal portraits of the painter Albert Lebourg and his wife, the organist Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) in 1908, Jules Adeline, Georges Dubosc and others. He appreciated pastels, which he often used for very large formats, such as ours or Le Christ expirant (Christ expiring, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen).

Zacharie also painted allegorical murals in Rouen buildings, notably in the Salle des actes at the Lycée Corneille, and in the churches of Saint-Clément and Saint-Godard. He also practiced lithography, drypoint and etching. Dubosc describes his numerous sanguine drawings, but today it is mainly charcoal or pencil drawings that have survived, including his portraits and genre scenes close to those of François Bonvin, such as La Récureuse (The Scrubber),¹ Le Coin de cuisine (The Kitchen corner),² or Le jeune poète (The Young poet).³ He also produced fine portraits of women in graphite.

The two connoisseurs are assessing the quality of a painting, more precisely the accuracy of its proportions. These are undoubtedly portraits, although they are not identified in Georges Dubosc’s biography: the faces are extremely well characterized, and may one day be identified. The scene could take place in Zacharie’s studio. On the wall hang various studies that may have served as models for his works. That of a reclining woman, both arms forward, seems to have been used as a model for the woman in his 1883 painting Le Femme aux pigeons (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), while that of the crucified Christ may have served as a model for his Christ expirant.

Sold to Musée des Beaux-arts de Rouen