Children of Rouen: Costumes des Femmes du Pays de Caux

Plate 20. Enfans des environs de Rouen

Charming fashion copperplate of two girls from near Rouen in tall lace bonnets and their Sunday best.

From Pierre de la Mésangère's suite of plates Costumes des Femmes du Pays de Caux, Paris, 1827.

The fashion plates engraved by Georges-Jacques Gatine after original watercolours by Louis-Marie Lanté and Benoit Pécheux

The women of the region famously wore tall lace bonnets that dated back to the middle ages.

"Benoit Pécheux, a renowned painter, a specialist in Italian frescoes had worked in France since the Italian campaign and ran a workshop of itinerant Italian painters. In 1811, the church of Yvetot contacted him to decorate the chapel of the Virgin. The same year, he decorated the dome of Saint-Romain in Rouen. He was also called to Limpiville, Fécamp and Le Havre. On Sundays and holidays, he rubs shoulders with Cauchoises adorned with original headdresses and draws them before returning to Paris.

"La Mésangère, who ran the Journal des Dames et des Modes in the capital, in turn sent an artist to do a more complete report. it was Louis-Marie Lanté who, in 1819, went to stay in Caux and then in other parts of the province, mainly frequenting the fairs and the ports of the coast, to fix on paper the particularities of the costume." (Marguerite Bruneau, Connaitre Rouen)

Louis-Marie Lanté, 1789-1871, was a French painter, a pupil of Vaudoyer, and exhibited at the Salons from 1824 to 1838. He was the most prolific artist for Pierre de la Mésangère's famous Journal des Dames et des Modes for which he drew 1,466 fashion plates in watercolor from 1814 to 1829, many engraved by Georges-Jacques Gatine. He also drew suites of regional and historical costume plates including Ouvrieres de Paris 1816, Costumes of Hamburg 1827, Galerie des Femmes 1827, etc. All his books are very rare.

Georges-Jacques Gatine, 1773-c.1841, was a French engraver and etcher who specialized in costume plates and worked extensively with Lanté.

A few thumbprints outside the plate mark, but print in very good condition with fine hand-colour.