Combat du Chevalier d'Eon [joint] Cercle de l'Escrime - Assaut du 12 janvier 1895 - Encre sur papier

Battle of the Chevalier d'éon. Original ink drawing [with] Cercle de l'Escrime – Assaut du 12 janvier 1895
1895| 27 x 21 cm | one drawing
Original ink drawing showing the duel between the Chevalier d'éon – dressed as a woman – and Monsieur de Saint-Georges, which took place on the 9 April 1787 at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, George August of Ha
nover, future George IV.
Artist's signature stamp to lower right-hand corner of the work and artist's
monogram. Atelier stamp to verso. Manuscript note of title and date in pencil to verso: 1895.
Fine condition.
Provenance: the artist's workshop, as referred to in the Atelier Louis Anquetin catalogue (Thierry de Maigret, 28/11/08).
Also included is a program published by the Cercle de l'Escrime, announcing the "reenactment of the Contest of the Chevalière d'éon and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges" on the 12 January 1895; the drawing offered for sale is reproduced on the verso of the first leaf.
According to some sources, Charles Geneviève Louis d'éon de Beaumont, known as le Chevalier d'éon, was born a hermaphrodite. Making use of his androgyny, he became a spy for the King's secret service and brought France – dressing as a woman and adopting the identity of Lia de Beaumont – significant diplomatic successes. After the death of Louis XV, the Royal secret service was dissolved, and the Chevalier found himself without employment and crippled by debt. A forerunner of the transgender movement, he was the first to choose his gender, at the request of Louis XVI. Renouncing his military rights, he made a career in fencing, undertaking many public bouts right to the end of his life. After his body was laid out following his death, they declared that the "Chevalière" had male attributes.
Louis Anquetin, born in Étrépagny in 1861 and died in Paris in 1932, is an important French painter. He began his career alongside avant-garde painters such as Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He is the inventor, with Émile Bernard, of Cloisonnism. From 1884 to 1893, Louis Anquetin never stopped exploring the new possibilities that the freedom of Impressionism brought to French painting. From 1893, following a long confrontation with the “maîtres d'autrefois” “masters of the past,” he adopted a pictorial bias which would put him on the fringes of the general art movement and distance him from his friends. Dazzled by Baroque art and its creative vigour, he then thought that his childhood friends were taking a path that would lead to the death of painting. He believes in a “peinture parfaite” “perfect painting,” which is embodied in the re-remembering of Michelangelo and Rubens' lessons in particular. His work, therefore, becomes more classic; he advocates the return to the profession, by proposing to reflect on the a priori conditions of any possible form of art in accordance with the rules of perspective and anatomy, as practised by the masters of the 16th and 17th century. Leaving only a few works that can be described as monumental, Anquetin proves to be prolific as a result of his many studies and sketches; he who considered that drawing was “un moyen d'expression tout puissant” “an all powerful means of expression,” the obligatory foundation of all fine art. By working voluntarily in reverse of his time, Louis Anquetin made the existance of an original modern portrayal possible. Through his persistance and his passion for painting, he indeed prevented the path of the great western tradition from being completely sealed.
His works can be admired in many prestigious museums, such as the Musée d'Orsay or the Louvre in Paris, in San Francisco or in Detroit, in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, in the National Gallery and the Tate in London, etc.
A handsome representation of the Chevalière d'éon, a Romantic figure today considered the "patron saint" of the LGBTQI community.