Lot 1180 | Children on the Stairs

MUNIER, EMILE
Paris 1840 - 1895


Title: Children on the Stairs.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 66 x 51cm.
Notation: Signed lower left: E. MUNIER.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

This painting is a very typical one by the French painter Émile Munier. Two children, a boy and a girl, are sitting barefoot on a stone staircase in the open air. The two seem very familiar, a sibling relationship is conceivable. The little boy has hooked his left arm on the person sitting next to him and together they look at a sheet of paper with small drawings lying on his lap. The girl, who is clearly older, holds knitting tools in her hand and devotes herself to the drawings together with the young boy.
Munier became known for such sentimental genre scenes of children, mostly his own, and is still very appreciated by collectors today. He first began an apprenticeship at the Gobelins, the historic tapestry factory in Paris, to follow in his father's footsteps. But his love of painting won out and so he devoted himself exclusively to it. He received many commissions and mostly portrayed children with their pets. Often the children he painted were his own - he frequently immortalised his daughter in particular on canvas.