Jules MACHARD (Sampans, 1839 - Meudon, 1900) Selene, Goddess of the Moon Oval oil on canvas (Original canvas) Signed 'Machard' lower right Selene, goddess of the Moon, oil on canvas, signed, by. L. Machard 18.50 x 12.20 in. 47.0 x 31.0 cm Provenance: Gérard Lévy Collection ; Then by descent Bibliography: Jules Machard, le culte de la ligne, Musée des beaux-arts, Dole, 2003, p. 93, no. 16 A pupil of Émile Signol and Ernest Hébert at the Ecole des Beaux-arts, Jules Machard won the Prix de Rome for painting in 1865. Following an official career as a history painter, he also enjoyed some success as a portrait painter. Our sketch is a preparation for Séléné, a monumental canvas that caused a sensation at the 1874 Salon (cat. no. 1246), prompting a tapestry commission from the Manufacture des Gobelins and a number of eulogistic articles. Among them, Paul Chesneau gave an eloquent description in the Revue de France: "From the midst of the clouds, which she seems to push back with her divine foot, the figure rises, in her white nudity, blonde, light, airy, half inverted, bent in a movement of serpentine lines of unspeakable suppleness, young and charming and even beautiful, but of a gentle, amiable, seductive and chaste beauty. Her head is bathed in a vast silver nimbus. This nimbus, a ravishing invention, is the orb of the planet itself, luminous throughout, but brightly lit on one of its crescent-shaped edges. With one of her small fists, Selene embraces the arc of light; with the other hand, she brings back its points and shoots a line into infinity. In the past, we have to go back to Prud'hon and perhaps as far as Correggio to encounter a plastic creation with an equal power of charm<a href="#_ftn1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong><i>[1]</i></strong></a>." <a href="#_ftnref1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[1]</a> Chesneau, Paul, "Le Salon sentimental", Revue de France, 9 July 1874, p. 95. Jules MACHARD (Sampans, 1839 - Meudon, 1900) 47.0 x 31.0 cm A pupil of Émile Signol and Ernest Hébert at the École des Beaux-arts, Jules Machard won the Prix de Rome for painting in 1865. Following an official career as a history painter, he also enjoyed some success as a portrait painter. Our sketch is a preparation for Séléné, a monumental canvas that caused a sensation at the 1874 Salon (cat. no. 1246), prompting a tapestry commission from the Manufacture des Gobelins and a number of eulogistic articles. Among them, Paul Chesneau gave an eloquent description in the Revue de France: "From the midst of the clouds, which she seems to push back with her divine foot, the figure rises, in her white nudity, blonde, light, airy, half inverted, bent in a movement of serpentine lines of unspeakable suppleness, young and charming and even beautiful, but of a gentle, amiable, seductive and chaste beauty. Her head is bathed in a vast silver nimbus. This nimbus, a ravishing invention, is the orb of the planet itself, luminous throughout, but brightly lit on one of its crescent-shaped edges. With one of her small fists, Selene embraces the arc of light; with the other hand, she brings back its points and shoots a line into infinity. In the past, we have to go back to Prud'hon and perhaps as far as Correggio to encounter a plastic creation with an equal power of charm<a href="#_ftn1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong><em>[1]</em></strong></a>." <a href="#_ftnref1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[1]</a> Chesneau, Paul, "Le Salon sentimental", Revue de France, 9 July 1874, p. 95.