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- (Jean-Louis-) Ernest Meissonier (1815 - 1891)
- Polichinelle
- France
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- Date: 1860
- Object Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil on pine panel
- Image size: 55.2 x 36 cm
- Object size: 56.2 x 37 cm
- Object size: with frame, 90.5 x 72 x 11.5 cm
- Inv: P337
- Location: West Gallery III
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- With his baggy pants, large belly, and characteristic wooden clogs, one cannot fail to recognise the jolly Polichinelle (or Punch as he is better known in English). This representation of the popular character from the commedia dell’arte was originally painted on a door panel in the Paris apartment owned by the beautiful Apollonie Sabatier. A celebrated artists’ muse — her famous Paris salon attracted all the prominent French artists of the nineteenth century including Victor Hugo, Édouard Manet, Gustave Doré, among others — she was also the long-time mistress of Sir Richard Wallace.
The clogs (sabatier in French) depicted in this painting were doubtless intended as a visual pun on her family name, Sabatier. The panel was then cut from the door and retouched by Meissonier in preparation for Sabatier’s sale in 1861.
- With his baggy pants, large belly, and characteristic wooden clogs, one cannot fail to recognise the jolly Polichinelle (or Punch as he is better known in English). This representation of the popular character from the commedia dell’arte was originally painted on a door panel in the Paris apartment owned by the beautiful Apollonie Sabatier. A celebrated artists’ muse — her famous Paris salon attracted all the prominent French artists of the nineteenth century including Victor Hugo, Édouard Manet, Gustave Doré, among others — she was also the long-time mistress of Sir Richard Wallace.