The Mariner’s Wife (ca. 1825)

Jean-Augustin Franquelin: The Mariner’s Wife

Here, a woman in Italian costume despairs over the fate of her husband, a seaman. Such subjects, which combine the pathos of history painting and the exoticism of foreign cultures, developed out of popular scenes of brigandage. Léopold Robert, one of the originators of this genre, was formerly thought to be the author of this painting (a false signature appears at lower left), which is now attributed to Jean-Augustin Franquelin and dated to the last fifteen years of his life. Appreciated during his lifetime for variations on this very subject painted in the polished technique seen here, Franquelin passed out of fashion after his death—by which time the work of Robert, who died shortly before him, in 1835, was highly sought after. [Metropolitan Museum]