"Je pensais à vous en achevant mon tableau"

Autograph letter from painter Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, regarding his latest painting, "The Last Supper", now held in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras. 3 pages on a folded sheet.
Trained in the studios of Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme, Dagnan-Bouveret received the second Prix de Rome. Of naturalist inspiration, he devoted himself to religious painting and had a prolific career as a portraitist at the end of his life. He received prestigious commissions from the Countess of Béarn and the New York Frick family.
"[...] je pensais à vous en achevant mon tableau. A chaque tentative nouvelle, vous êtes venu m'encourager et cette fois j'ai osé entreprendre, et dans de grandes dimensions, un des plus nobles et des plus touchants sujets : la Cène. C'est vous dire qu'il me serait très agréable avant l'envoi au Champ de Mars, de vous le montrer en mon atelier [...]" ["[...] I was thinking of you while finishing my painting. With each new attempt, you came to encourage me and this time I dared to undertake, and in large dimensions, one of the noblest and most touching subjects: the Last Supper. This is to say that it would be very pleasant for me, before sending it to the Champ de Mars, to show it to you in my studio [...]"]