Two letters:

François-Pascal-Simon baron Gérard (Rome 1770 - Paris 1837)
A letter to General Rapp in his own hand, signed and dated Paris, 9 April 1811; 2 1/2 pp. on folded quarto (inv. no. 2000-A.243)

Letters from Baron Gérard can not be said to be among the most fascinating or enlightening artists' correspondence of the period. In most cases they are merely short messages of a rather prosaic nature. However, the letter acquired in 2000 is an exception, due to both its length and its content. It forms a valuable addition to the corpus of some forty letters by the artist already in the collection.

The letter is addressed to Jean (Comte) Rapp (1773-1821), general of Napoleon's army and governor of Dantzig. Rapp seems to have had a keen interest in contemporary painting and to have been an important patron of Gérard. The catalogue of Rapp's collection lists seven works by the painter, including the famous Cupid and Psyche (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

The letter's contents reveal that Gérard played an important role as an advisor and agent in putting together the remainder of the general's collection. During the Salon of 1810, he purchased three landscapes on Rapp's behalf, one of which - View of the ruins of the castle of Pierrefonds, can be identified as no. 533, by Pierre-Antoine Marchais (1763-1859) ­ and he also recommended to acquire a large painting, Angelica and Medoro, probably the work exhibited as no. 7, by Antoine Ansiaux (1764-1840).

Once the Salon closed, Gérard was able to reclaim his Battle of Austerlitz (1808, Musée Historique, Versailles) and to continue working on its smaller version for Rapp who features in the painting as he reports the defeat of the Russian forces to his emperor (Christie's, London, auction of 8 May 1985, no. 126). Gérard promises the general that his likeness will be perfect, both here and in the engraving he is planning to produce after the painting (Jean Godefroy, 1813). Finally, he reports that Boucher-Desnoyers, "un de nos 1ers graveurs" has also started working on a series of six engravings after Gérard's "Amours", purchased by Rapp from the artist the previous year.

Bibliographic  
references   		This letter is in response to one written by Rapp on 6 December 1810 (Gérard, H. Lettres adressées au baron François Gérard, peintre d'histoire, par les artistes et les personnages célèbres de son temps, 2e éd., Paris 1886, vol. II, no. 122), and was answered by Rapp on 12 June 1811 (ibid no. 123).



Andreas Achenbach (Kassel 1815 - Dusseldorf 1910)
A letter to John Longworth in his own hand, signed and dated Dusseldorf, 27 January 1887; 11 pp. on folded octavo (inv. no. 2000-A.280)

This long and extremely personal letter is addressed to one John Longworth, a collector living in Cincinnati who owned at least twelve paintings by Achenbach. Longworth seems to have asked the artist to write more about his work, but Achenbach replied that " [...] I do not feel comfortable writing about that which I paint. Beforehand, that would be imprudent, while afterwards it would be superfluous or simply too late. Imprudent, since given even the briefest of descriptions, the enthusiast and expert will arrive at a completely different perception of the painting to that formed by expectations [...]. After the event, if the painting does not speak more clearly [than the pen], I would be well advised never to take up paintbrush ever again, but to do everything with the pen. [...] Starvation would then be my fate." However, there is a deeper reason: he hesitates to describe with the pen, "[something] of so fragile a nature that I always baulk at actually taking it in my hands [...] for even if the painting has been completed in spirit, its physical realization may entail some aspect which the concept renders impossible to achieve, at least in its pure, virginal form. How many such castles in the air have never been built? I cannot deny that I grieve for these stillborn children."

He concludes by offering Longworth advice on the construction of a building to accommodate the paintings in his collection: " [...] as large as possible and with light from above, but not too high". A postscript reads "my studio is thirty feet square, yet is still too small. You should build as big as possible."

Achenbach, champion of the romantic realist landscape, was one of the most successful painters of the Dusseldorf school. His work was particularly sought after in America, not least due to the activities of the Dusseldorf Gallery in New York, which started in 1849 to exhibit and sell works by Dusseldorf artists. During the 1870s, Achenbach sent various works to the Industrial Exhibition in Cincinnati.