Galerie Michael, Beverly Hills

Acquired from the above by the present owner

As a formative artist of the Barbizon School, Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña’s influence can be seen in both the works of his contemporaries and generations to follow. The success of the artist’s mythological scenes likely inspired William Bouguereau, in part, to take on the subject in his tableaux des fantasies and in the early 1860s the two shared Durand-Ruel as their dealer. Durand-Ruel promoted Academic artists and the Barbizon school to an international coterie of collectors. The present work substantiates a further link between the artists as Diaz reinterprets Bouguereau’s Bohémienne au tambour de basque (1867, sol💞d at Sotheby’s, New York, 22 May, 2019, lot 31) with his own perspective and style.