Romain-Etienne-Gabriel Prieur
(1806 - Paris - 1879)

A Roman Woman with a Tambourine, 1833/35

Oil on canvas
Signed lower right G. Prieur
On the verso of the canvas with a label inscribed Etude faite à / Rome

31 x 21.4 cm

Prieur began his artistic career as a pupil of the landscape painter Jean-Victor Bertin (1792-1842). In 1833 he was awarded the Prix de Rome in the category paysage historique for his painting Ulysse et Nausicaa. Growing interest in landscape painting at the beginning of the nineteenth-century in France was largely due to the work of artists like Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822) and Bertin, Prieur's professor. This interest led to the establishment of a new artistic discipline, the historical landscape, in 1817 and it became a recognized category at the annual Prix de Rome contest. The prizewinner was awarded a four-year bursary to study as a pensionnaire at the Villa Medici in Rome.

This oil sketch, very probably a study from life, was executed during Prieur's visit to Rome. He has skilfully captured the aloofness of a young Roman beauty holding a tambourine. She is a member of the minenti who, in early nineteenth-century Rome, liked to display their status by dressing in expensive and lavishly decorated clothing - and not only on festive occasions.[1] The costume worn by the young woman in the present sketch is characteristic - a short velvet jacket with tasseling and puffed sleeves, a long skirt with a white silk pinafore with applied lace trim, white silk stockings and flat, silver-grey shoes. Attention was also lavished on hairstyles, hair clips and slides. Other insignia of wealth consisted of costly earrings. The young woman is holding a large tambourine, a musical instrument traditionally used by women and played to accompany the saltarello, an energetic Roman folk dance.[2]

When Prieur's wife Adèle fell ill in 1835 he broke off his studies in Italy and returned to Paris. He was rarely able to travel again for any length of time although he did visit the South of France and Switzerland. Encouraged by Bertin, Prieur took up landscape painting en plein air during his brief sojourn as a Villa Medici scholar in Rome. Most of his landscape studies were executed at localities close to Paris - in Versailles, Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He exhibited at the Paris Salon between 1830 and 1875.

1) Museo di Roma in Trastevere, 30.05.2011: http://www.museodiromaintrastevere.it/percorsi/percorsi_per_temi/
vita_quotidiana/l_abito_popolare_romano_i_minenti.
2) Roberta Tucci (ed.), I suoni della campagna romana: per una ricostruzione del paesaggio sonoro di un territorio del Lazio, Rome 2003, p.43. Thomas Gsell-Fels, Rom und die Campagna, Leipzig and Vienna 1895: The Romans have a natural talent for music [...]. The saltarello is an energetic dance [for one couple] performed at gathering speed, characterized by [leaps and] skips and involving vigorous use of the upper body. The man dances to his guitar while his partner raps on her tambourine and gracefully lifts her pinafore. The impassioned dancing and physical agility of the couple recall the Bacchic dances of Ancient Rome (the saltarello is often seen in the city, for example in empty squares, vineyards and gardens, and at the grape harvest on Monte Testaccio in October).