Une soirée à Coblentz

Original watercolour for plate No. 20 of the series Le Bon Genre published by La Mésangère (issued in 1817, 1822, and 1827). A tiny loss at the upper right corner, not affecting the illustration; a marginal tear restored on the verso with a paper addition, without loss. Title, date, and signatures in manuscript ink: "Une Soirée de Coblentz", "Paris, juin 1806", "Dessiné par Garbizza".

An exceptional work, signed and dated by the illustrator Angelo Garbizza (1777-1813), anonymously printed in Le Bon Genre, the celebrated collection of engravings depicting the manners and fashions of Paris during the Napoleonic era and the Restoration. The series presents elegant female silhouettes rendered in a semi-caricatural and humorous style, and stands as one of the finest achievements of French social satire in the early nineteenth century.

This plate, entitled "Une soirée de Coblentz", transports the viewer to the Imperial period, depicting a crowd seated in a park, entertained by a woman with a tambourine and a man playing a barrel organ with his back turned, while a woman of colour, wearing a brightly coloured turban, looks directly out at the viewer. The name boulevard de Coblentz was given by royalists to the southern section of the boulevard des Italiens in Paris, running from the rue Grange-Batelière to the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, in reference to the city of Koblenz, where great numbers of aristocrats had gathered in flight from the Revolution.

Garbizza was known to have contributed drawings to La Mésangère's great compendium. However, the names of draughtsmen rarely appeared on the plates themselves: as the British Museum notes, "The best evidence for the identity of the designers comes from an album of 39 original drawings, described by Colas which gives the names Garbizza, Dutailly, Garneray and Lanté." The present original watercolour was indeed reproduced in that album (Trente-neuf aquarelles originales de Harriet, Pasquier, Garbizza, Dutailly, Garnerey et Lanté pour Le bon genre, Paris, 1930), and provided the basis for the attribution of the twentieth plate of Le Bon Genre.

Provenance: collection Victorien Sardou.