78 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Holiday Spring May / June 2024 2023 2024
Seven years on , working at the Clark , Bell learned of a group of three works by Lethière coming up for auction . She immediately notified Meslay . Accompanying Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death was a to-scale preparatory drawing , and a to-scale reproductive engraving after the painting . It was an incredible opportunity for the museum to have all three representations of the same subject . They bid on the trio , which was owned by a private collector . This was no Christie ’ s sleeper sale ; there was institutional interest , and people were closely watching it . “ We were elated when we got it !” recalls Bell .
When the painting arrived in Williamstown , it was on its original structure and unlined . It was unbelievable that it was in such a pure state , says Bell . They took it to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center to be lightly cleaned . Bell says there were “ piles of dirt and dust ” from the delicate process — probably dust from Rome in 1788 , where it was originally painted , she says .
“ From April of 2018 , we were sure that we needed to do something big about the artist , in part because there ' s never been a major exhibition ,” says Bell . That was the first Lethière painting that the Clark purchased . Because of the publicity surrounding the acquisition , they were contacted by a dealer in Bordeaux , France , who had a bound album containing over 100 drawings by Lethière , as well as some by his students and close friends . That album will be in the new exhibition , open to a spread , and a screen will display images from every page of the book — including sketches of dogs , cacti , Roman ruins , and more . “ It ’ s a testament to his time in Rome , as both a student and then as the director of the French Academy ,” says Bell .
The Clark also has been acquiring works that show the network surrounding Lethière . The museum purchased a painting by artist Adolphe Roehn , The Swearing in of President Boyer at the Palace of Haiti ( c . 1818 , oil on canvas ). Boyer was the second president of the Republic of Haiti , and the painting depicts a celebration of his inauguration after the death of Alexandre Pétion . “ It ’ s this unbelievable , iconographical depiction of the Haitian Revolution and Haitian independence ,” says Bell . “ It was a way to more fully tell the story of Caribbean diaspora , the connections between mainland France and the colonies , and the free Republic of Haiti . We found it at an auction in France .”
Lethière and Boyer were aligned in their abolitionist sentiments , which was why Lethière sent his own son to deliver Oath of the Ancestors to the new president as a gift to the people of Haiti .
In 2021 , the Clark acquired The Wedding Trip by artist Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot , a student of Lethière ’ s . Mentorship of women artists was very important to him , and Haudebourt-Lescot was one of his most successful students . She exhibited over 100 paintings in the Salon , and when Lethière was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome , he took her with him and installed her as a student there . This caused consternation among the male students — angry letters were written back and forth between
Oath of the Ancestors , c . 1822 , oil on canvas . Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien , Portau-Prince . Photo / RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource , NY .
Rome and Paris . But Lethière staunchily supported her . The Louvre also has loaned a self-potrait of Haudebourt-Lescot for the Clark ’ s exhibition .
“ A big part of this exhibition is about telling stories that haven ' t come to light yet ,” says Bell , “ or maybe not as fully as they deserve to be . Haudebourt-Lescot is an example of one of these many figures .”
Another significant painting by Lethière that will be exhibited is Woman Leaning on a Portfolio , on loan from
Worcester Art Museum . “ We believe this is a painting of his stepdaughter , Eugénie Servières ,” says Bell . “ He marries his longtime partner , Marie-Joseph-Honorée Vanzenne , in 1799 , and that is the year that he paints this portrait . She becomes not only his stepdaughter , but she is one of his students . Servières would go on to exhibit in the Salon and would sell her paintings to some of the most important collectors and in Europe . She is also an artist completely unknown today . We ' ll have another example of her work in the exhibition . She ' s never been consistently identified , so to be able to give her a name and a voice is , again , part of the bigger themes here are like telling stories that have been lost in time .”
With any exhibition , the goal is to bring to light information that may have once been well-known , but has since been lost in history . This is an extreme case , where there are no books , no articles , no dissertations written about many of these artists associated with Lethière — or of him . “ All of the archival work is happening in real time ,” says Bell . “ I have never worked on a project in which we discovered so much new material .” Through this research , they also are discovering and learning more about the strength of Caribbean community in Paris at that time .
The majority of letters associated with Lethière are in the National Archives of France . One of the most beautiful of those letters is not by him , says Bell . His father was in a shipwreck off the coast of the United States , and he made his way to Philadelphia , where there was a big community of Caribbean expatriates . In a letter to his son , he writes , “ I acknowledge you as my son .” Up until that moment , Lethière couldn ' t take the last name of his father , Pierre Guillon . He was born outside of marriage and did not have the legal right to have his father ' s name . When the laws changed , Lethière ’ s father writes this declaration of the certainty of his paternity . There are two copies of this letter , and in the version that they found , Lethière ’ s father mentions the mother , Marie-Francoise Pepaye , about whom , until then , little information was known .
Meslay believes that race was not so much the reason for Lethière fading from the public eye . One reason was that his works weren ’ t very visible , so it was