Leon Pomarede (French/New Orleans, 1807-1892)

Leon Pomarede
(French/New Orleans/St. Louis, 1807-1892)

"Probably a Portrait of the Chouteau Family of St. Louis, Possibly Dr. Nicolas N. DeMenil and Emilie-Sophie Chouteau DeMenil", 1852

oil on canvas
signed and dated upper left.
Framed.
53-3/4" x 45", framed 56-1/2" x 48"

Literature: John Francis McDermott, "Leon Pomarede, 'Our Parisian Knight of the Ease'" Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis 34:1 (Winter 1949): 8-18.

Notes: Leon Pomarede, a French emigre, and resident of New Orleans and St. Louis, was one of the most diverse and prolific artists of the 19th century, a virtuoso of all trades who worked grandeur on all scales. He was a portrait miniaturist, but designed immense altar pieces and sculptures for cathedrals at the behest of archbishops, governors and city plutocrats - including the [Old] St. Louis Cathedral, St. Patrick's of New Orleans, and St. Louis University Hall. He designed and painted the funeral processions of President Zachary Taylor, and Vice President and South Carolina statesman J. C. Calhoun. In 1848-49, he created an unprecedented 5,400-foot panoramic mural of the Mississippi River in four panels; spanning more than fifteen football fields, it documented its sensational waterways and past from steamboats and flatboats, to buffalo hunts and Indian war dances to the Great Fire of St. Louis. The epic work received wide acclaim and toured throughout the United States. After opening in St. Louis, it was exhibited for two months at the New Orleans Armory Hall before continuing to New York and the east coast where it met its untimely demise in a storage fire in Newark in 1850.

For all of Pomarede's prodigious work, not more than a handful remain today. The large altar triptych at St. Patrick's in New Orleans is one of the few intact murals; another invaluable vestige is his 1832 view of St. Louis painted from the East Bank of the Mississippi. Not only is it one of the oldest depictions of the city, it was also owned by the city's founding family, and probable sitters of the portrait offered here - Emilie-Sophie Chouteau (1813-1874) and her husband Dr. Nicolas DeMenil (1812-1882).

The Chouteaus, French colonial/creoles from New Orleans, were magnates in the fur trading industry that first established St. Louis as a major post and later city. Pomarede was well acquainted with the Chouteau family; according to his daughter Pauline, the Chouteau family brought Pomarede to St. Louis from their native New Orleans in the 1830s, and he continued to receive commissions from the French community through their patronage. Emilie, the granddaughter of Rene-Auguste Chouteau, Jr., married DeMenil, a prominent French-born doctor in 1836. In 1875, the couple lent their view of the city by Pomarede to Richard Compton to be reproduced as an illustration in the Pictorial St. Louis. Given the family connection, it is quite probable that this portrait is of a Chouteau member. The woman sitter closely resembles the Chouteau women, namely Emilie, as well as her cousin Emilie Pratt. Both sitters bear close resemblance to known portraits of Emilie Chouteau and Nicolas DeMenil, conserved at their home in Benton Park, now a historic museum - the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion.
Condition Report: **Canvas relined, darkening of the varnish layer. Scattered craquelure, surface dirt, scattered inpainting touch-ups to background, clothing, proper right edge of hair on female's figure, hair and cheek of male sitter as well as hands of both. Old possible tear repairs to upper right, lower left and upper center edge. Frame with marks, nicks, abrasions and small losses.