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After Meissonier

acrylic on postcard

14.8 x 10.4 cm

size in frame: 25.6 x 21.2 cm

Using acrylic, I have painted onto a postcard of Ernest Meissonier’s ‘Polichinelle’ from the Wallace Collection.

I wanted to make this character appear more sinister by adding to his costume two elements from fetish costume, along with a tongue to animate his hidden face. The tail was inspired by the kitten’s tail in Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting ‘Two Girls Dressing a kitten by Candlelight’ at Kenwood House, a detail often overlooked. To elevate the postcard support and to somewhat disguise the painted additions, I made a frame using a richly ornate moulding which closely imitates the original painting’s frame. As well as being an artist, I am an Old Master researcher, and it interests me to engage with art from the past in this way.

Pulcinella was a character that originated in Italian commedia dell’arte. In following centuries versions of this character were seen across Europe in puppetry, in England we know him as ‘Mr. Punch’ from the ‘Punch and Judy Show’. At the beginning of the 1860s, the french artist Ernest Meissonier produced a series of paintings devoted to the character of Polichinelle. The Wallace collection’s painting was painted on a door panel in the Paris apartment of Apollonie Sabatier, a French salon holder and artists' model in 1850s Paris, and possibly the mistress of Richard Wallace. I am not sure I would agree with the wording of their catalogue entry, ‘The louche character of Punch was a not inappropriate decoration for the apartment of a celebrated courtesan’, but it is interesting to consider why she might have commissioned the work. In 2011, Sotheby’s Paris sold a wonderful drawing related to the series.

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