Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775, oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 38 1/2 in. (79.4 x 97.8 cm), Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-167
Toggle Caption
Toggle Dual View
A painting depicting a woman wearing a white hat, black blouse, and a large white dress. She rides on top of a brown horse and has a child on her lap. Another woman wearing a yellow and red dress reached out to hold the child. Behind the horse are two men one wearing a gray coat while another one wears a blue one. They are all under an old archway with overgrowth covering it.
Fig. 1. Etienne Aubry, Farewell to the Nurse, ca. 1776–1777, oil on canvas, 20 7/16 x 24 3/4 in. (51.9 x 62.8 cm), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 1955.636
Toggle Caption
Toggle Dual View
A black and white print depicting a small child sitting on a woman’s lap. The child is facing a toddler who is being held by another woman with a large dress. To the right of them, A well-dressed man sits with his legs crossed and holds onto a long stick or cane. To their left, are more gathered and watching the children. The group of people are in a room, with various pots and pans on the ground as well as some on a stand connected to the wall.
Fig. 2. Nicolas Delaunay, after Etienne Aubry, First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1787, engraving on paper, 18 13/16 x 24 1/2 in. (47.8 x 62.2 cm), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Toggle Caption
Toggle Dual View

Resize view

Resize view

Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775

Download PDF Share

doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302

ArtistEtienne Aubry, French, 1745–1781
TitleThe First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship
Object Date1773 or 1775
Alternate and Variant TitlesDeux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné; La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle; Visite à la nourrice
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions (Unframed)31 1/4 x 38 1/2 in. (79.4 x 97.8 cm)
SignatureSigned and dated lower right: Et. aubry, 177[5 or 3]
Credit LineThe Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-167
Catalogue Entry

curatorial

Citation

Chicago:

Richard Rand, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” catalogue entry in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.5407.

MLA:

Rand, Richard. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” catalogue entry. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.5407.

Etienne Aubry was one of the more accomplished genre painters who emerged at the Paris SalonsSalon, the: Exhibitions organized by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture) and its successor the Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des Beaux Arts), which took place in Paris from 1667 onwards. in the 1770s, filling the void left by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), who had withdrawn from publicly exhibiting his work during that decade, and by Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), who had turned his focus back to painting still lifes. Aubry first came to notice as a portraitist, the category in which he was accepted by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1771, but he aspired to be a painter of multifigure pictures. He achieved this first, and most successfully, with scenes of daily life, but he later turned to historical subjects. In 1777, at the urging of the comte d’Angivillier (1730–1810)—the influential directeur des batîments (in effect, the minister of culture) and one of Aubry’s principal patrons—he traveled to Italy, but his attempts at history painting met with little enthusiasm. He died in Paris soon after his return from Rome, at the age of thirty-six.

Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, in her foundational article on Aubry published in 1925, considered The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship to be “one of the most ambitious genre paintings painted by Aubry.”1“Un des plus ambitieux tableaux de genre qu’ait peints Aubry”; Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, “Quelques tableaux de genre inédits par Étienne Aubry (1745–1781),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 67 (1925): 82. The only systematic modern study of Aubry’s oeuvre is Caroline Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi 1745–1781” (PhD. diss., Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1989). He first exhibited it at the Paris Salon of 1777 with the description, “Two spouses, going to see one of their children at the wet nurse’s, encourage his older brother to embrace the little nurseling.”2“Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné”; Explication des Peintures, Sculptures et Gravures, de Messieurs de l’Académie Royale (hereafter Salon livret), exh. cat. (Paris: Herissant, 1777), 25. The rustic interior, with its rough stone floor and bare wall devoid of decoration, suggests the humble circumstances of the young nursemaid, who sits to the left of center, holding her young charge in her lap. The infant leans toward his older brother, who stands on the tips of his toes as he reaches up to kiss his sibling. He is encouraged by his mother, who gently presses him forward. His father, seated comfortably at the left, gazes upon this touching scene, as do two figures standing at the right: a younger man—probably the nursemaid’s husband—and a kindly older woman, who leans on the back of a chair. Aubry orchestrated the picture with considerable skill, arranging his figures with care and employing an array of eloquent gestures and expressions to convey the nuances of his little drama, techniques inspired by the works of Greuze. At his death, Aubry was recognized for bringing a level of sophistication to these pictures of daily life, which “he succeeded in making interesting by the pathos of his scenes, the moving predicaments of his actors, and virtuous subjects . . .  and by a pleasing contrast of passions, feelings, and characters.”3“En intéressant par le pathétique des scenes, par la situation touchante des acteurs, par des sujets vertueux, . . . par une opposition heureusement contrastée des passions de sentimens [sic] et de caractères”; “Notice sur M. Aubry, peintre,” 1781, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 61, no.1903, p. 2–3.

Unlike Greuze, Aubry, as one art critic wrote in 1777, “has the merit of often bringing together in his pictures city folk with those from the countryside.”4“M. Aubry a le mérite de réunir ordinairement dans ses Tableaux les gens de la ville avec ceux de la campagne”; Jugement d’une demoiselle de quatorze ans sur le Sallon de 1777 (Paris: Quillau,1777), 16, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes,vol. 10, no. 178. In The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, he distinguished between the aristocratic parents and their rural counterparts—what the artist’s viewers would have recognized as representing the Second EstateThree Estates, the: In pre-Revolutionary France (before 1789), society was divided into three classes. The First Estate was composed of the clergy and those who directed the Catholic church. They could impose a ten-percent tax (tithe). The Second Estate comprised the nobility and members of the Royal family, who did not have to pay taxes. The Third Estate encompassed the rest of society, upon whom all taxes fell, from the poorest people to the upper-middle classes. and the Third Estate, respectively—through specificities of clothing, facial and body types, and poses and gestures.5As pointed out in Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 480. These distinctions allowed viewers to appreciate the class dynamics in play, enhancing the underlying conflict enacted before their eyes. The infant’s birth parents have come, it is clear, from an entirely different world: the well-to-do father, seated at left, is dressed at the height of fashion in a red velvet coat trimmed in gold, knee breeches (culottes), and a tricorne hat displayed jauntily on his head, his long hair pulled back by a blue ribbon. He appears at ease, gazing with some amusement at his children’s encounter. His wife, wearing a magnificent white satin dress that swirls around her in billowing folds, with her hair pulled up in elaborate curls, leans toward her sons with a slightly anxious look crossing her face. This elegant couple anchors the composition, filling the modest surroundings with confidence and casual authority. By contrast, the rustic pair observing the scene at the right expresses in their poses and slight remove a deference befitting their social standing, even as their kindly expressions suggest the emotional bonds they have developed for their young charge.

At the center of the scene, Aubry placed the nursemaid herself, holding the little boy out to receive his brother’s embrace. Unlike the sour nurses in Greuze’s The Nursemaids, this young woman appears healthy and maternal, well suited for her job. She embodies contemporaneous notions of the ideal wet nurse, as described in 1765 in the Encyclopédie (a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772): “The qualifications of a good wet nurse are usually considered to be her age, the amount of time since she has given birth, her physical condition, especially that of her breasts, the quality of her milk, and, finally, her morals.”6“Les conditions necessaires à une bonne nourrice se tirent ordinairement de son âge, du tems [sic] qu’elle est accouchée,de la constitution de son corps, particulierement de ses mamelles,de la nature de son lait, & enfin de ses mœurs”; “Nourrice,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. Denis Diderot (1765; repr. Stuttgart:Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1966), 11:260. Aubry shows her in simple clothes, wearing a modest bonnet, and with one breast and nipple exposed, in pointed contrast to the elaborately draped and coiffed mother; the nursemaid represents “nature” rather than the world of “culture” signified by the high-born husband and wife. This dichotomy is also conveyed by the two brothers—one sporting an elegant white suit and black chapeau; the other nearly naked—and by the visual rhyme between the father’s walking stick and the long handle of the copper pot at the lower right. The latter forms part of a beautifully realized group of onions, cabbages, and cooking utensils; they are drawn straight from the repertoire of Chardin, another key influence on Aubry’s art. This still life in the corner of the painting suggests a well-stocked larder and the simple, healthy country diet of the nursemaid and her family.

The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship was only one of several genre scenes Aubry submitted to the Salon of 1777 (he also exhibited a Portrait of an Artist and “numerous small pictures” that have not been identified). It may have been painted several years earlier—the last numeral of the date on the Nelson-Atkins’ picture appears to be a “3” or a “5” rather than the “6” that is often assumed.7Aubry’s submissions to the Salon of 1777 are “no. 127. Portrait d’un Artiste” and “no. 128. Plusieurs petits Tableaux, sous le même numéro”; Salon livret, 25. Fossey has identified two of the latter as L’Heureuse mère and L’Enfant effrayé; Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 26. Fossey also catalogued two drawings for the composition, both lost; Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” nos. 103 and 104. See report of examination by Nathan Sutton, NAMA conservation intern, November 2, 2009, NAMA curatorial files. It was not unusual at the time for artists to exhibit works made at an earlier date. At the Salon, the few critics who mentioned Aubry were generally admiring of his large family drama The Interrupted Wedding (private collection)8MMI, exh. cat. (London: Hall and Knight, 2001), 154–57; Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2005), 226–29, fig. 87. but more critical of his other works. One of them wrote, “M. Aubry makes scenes of daily life: there is a certain merit in his works, but he is far too mannered . . . ; all in all, he would do better to devote himself to portraiture.”9“M. Aubry fera donc le genre familier: il y a quelque mérite dans ses productions; mais il est beaucoup trop maniéré . . . ; au surplus, il fera mieux de se livrer au portrait”; La Prêtresse, ou Nouvelle Manière de Prédire ce qui est arrivé (Rome: les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1777), 17, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 189, p. 17. The Nelson-Atkins painting received mixed reviews: one writer thought that “its vigor, its execution, and its expression are all admirable,”10“Les deux époux . . . forment aussi en Tableau où la vigeur, l’effet & l’expression se font également admirer”; Lettres Pittoresques, à l’Occasion des Tableaux Exposés au Sallon, en 1777 (Paris: P. F. Gueffier, [1777]), 22, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 190, p. 22. while another complained of its “badly painted” colors that were “laid on too thick.”11“Mal peint: les couleurs en sont épaisses & plaquées”; Les Tableaux du Louvre, Où Il n’y a Pas Le Sens Commun, Histoire Véritable (Paris: Cailleau, 1777), 17, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 186. The subject seems to have particularly disturbed the latter critic: “I will say nothing about it, because attitudes that give rise to a practice so contrary to nature as that of entrusting one’s children to a hired woman must not be very natural and, consequently, cannot touch the heart of a rational man.”12“Quant au sujet, je n’en dirai rien, parce que des sentimens [sic] qui tiennent à un usage aussi peu dans la Nature que celui de confier ses enfans [sic] à une femme mercenaire, ne doivent pas être fort naturels, & par conséquent ne peuvent toucher un home raisonnable”; Les Tableaux du Louvre, Où Il n’y a Pas Le Sens Commun, Histoire Véritable, 17. This was becoming a common refrain among reform-minded thinkers during these years, who condemned wet nursing in lieu of mothers breastfeeding their own children.13For a good analysis, see Bernadette Fort, “Greuze and the Ideology of Infant Nursing,” in Anja Müller, Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006), 117–34. The writer in the Encyclopédie, for example, criticized the practice: “Aside from the usual rapport between the child and the mother, the latter is much more likely to take tender care of her child than a hired woman who is only motivated by the salary she receives, which is often very modest. One must conclude that a child’s mother, even if she is not as good a wet nurse, is still preferable to a stranger.”14“Indépendamment du rapport ordinaire du tempérament de l’enfant à celui de la mere [sic], celle-ci est bien plus propre à prendre un tendre soin de son enfant, qu’une femme empruntée qui n’est animée que par la récompense d’un loyer mercenaire, souvent fort modique. Concluons que la mere [sic] d’un enfant, quoique moins bonne nourrice, est encore préférable à une étrangere [sic]”; “Nourrice,” in Diderot, Encyclopédie, 261.

Fig. 1. Etienne Aubry, Farewell to the Nurse, ca. 1776–1777, oil on canvas, 20 7/16 x 24 3/4 in. (51.9 x 62.8 cm), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 1955.636
Fig. 1. Etienne Aubry, Farewell to the Nurse, ca. 1776–1777, oil on canvas, 20 7/16 x 24 3/4 in. (51.9 x 62.8 cm), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 1955.636
Whether Aubry himself intended his picture as a pointed critique of the practice of wet nursing is difficult to say. The critic cited above apparently objected to what he understood as Aubry’s neutral representation of an “unnatural” practice. This seems also to be the case with another picture on the theme of nursing by Aubry, Farewell to the Nurse (Fig. 1), also shown at the Salon of 1777. The well-heeled parents have come to the country to pick up their child from the nursemaid; the child appears to resist being taken from the nurse, the only mother he has known. While the protagonists are similar to those in the Kansas City painting, and the pictures could almost be considered different episodes in the life of the same family, the paintings are not true pendants, as has sometimes been claimed; they are of very different sizes and were not sold together.15See, for example, Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 480. No doubt visitors to the Salon could have appreciated the emotional dimensions of what must have been a familiar experience, but again, as Emma Barker has argued, the painting seems to have been understood as a “perfectly straightforward depiction of current child-rearing practice” rather than a condemnation.16Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment, 192. Nor can we be sure that the central focus on the two brothers’ embrace had any allegorical or political meaning, as has sometimes been claimed. The title by which the Kansas City picture is commonly known derives from an engraving after Aubry’s painting, made by Nicolas Delaunay (1739–1792), which carried the title Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle (Fig. 2) and was not published until 1787, well after Aubry’s death.17“All are united in the warmth of this charming moment of the first filial embrace, which serves as a metaphor for the idea of universal brotherhood which flourished in this period”; Eric M.Zafran, The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1983), 119. See also Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment, 192, with the fair point that such meaning could have been posthumously applied to the engraving: “Some such didactic and even symbolic significance seems to underlie the title that Aubry’s composition acquired when the print after it [sic] appeared in 1787.”

Fig. 2. Nicolas Delaunay, after Etienne Aubry, First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1787, engraving on paper, 18 13/16 x 24 1/2 in. (47.8 x 62.2 cm), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Fig. 2. Nicolas Delaunay, after Etienne Aubry, First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1787, engraving on paper, 18 13/16 x 24 1/2 in. (47.8 x 62.2 cm), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
At that time the picture was owned by Jacques Augustin de Silvestre (1719–1809), a well-known painter-engraver who was in fact one of Aubry’s first teachers (and who had been drawing master to the royal children of King Louis XV). Silvestre’s celebrated picture collection—which he made available to artists and amateurs—had a long pedigree, having been started by his great-grandfather, the engraver Israël Silvestre (1621–1691). It included numerous Old Masters, inherited from his forebears, as well as works by contemporary artists that Jacques Augustin himself had acquired, including two paintings by Greuze and no fewer than fifteen by Chardin, artists much admired by Aubry. As for works by Aubry, besides The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, Silvestre owned numerous drawings as well as Coriolanus Taking Leave of his Wife to Join the Volscians in their Attack upon Rome (ca. 1780; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA), Aubry’s last painting and an attempt at historical painting after he returned from his trip to Rome.18“Notice sur Jacques-Augustin de Silvestre,” in François Léandre Regnault-Delalande, Catalogue Raisonné d’Objets d’Arts du Cabinet de Feu M. de Silvestre, ci-devant Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel, et Maitre à Dessiner des Enfans de France (Paris:[François Léandre Regnault-Delalande], 1810), iii–viii. The works by Aubry are catalogued under nos. 1 (Coriolanus), 2 (First Lesson), and 166–72 (drawings). The title given for the Kansas City painting, Les Adieux d’un villageois et de sa femme au nourrisson que le père et la mère leur retirent, has caused confusion with the Williamstown Farewell to the Wet Nurse (Fig. 1), but the dimensions recorded (29.6 x 39 pouces [inches]) match the Kansas City painting, and the painting is described as the one engraved by Delaunay under the title La première Leçon d’Amitié fraternelle. The Nelson-Atkins painting remained in Silvestre’s possession until his death, a testament to the importance he placed on it.

Richard Rand
July 2018

Notes

  1. “Un des plus ambitieux tableaux de genre qu’ait peints Aubry”; Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, “Quelques tableaux de genre inédits par Étienne Aubry (1745–1781),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 67 (1925): 82. The only systematic modern study of Aubry’s oeuvre is Caroline Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi 1745–1781” ( Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1989).

  2. “Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné”; Explication des Peintures, Sculptures et Gravures, de Messieurs de l’Académie Royale (hereafter Salon livret), exh. cat. (Paris: Herissant, 1777), 25.

  3. “En intéressant par le pathétique des scenes, par la situation touchante des acteurs, par des sujets vertueux, . . . par une opposition heureusement contrastée des passions de sentimens [sic] et de caractères”; “Notice sur M. Aubry, peintre,” 1781, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 61, no. 1903, p. 2–3.

  4. “M. Aubry a le mérite de réunir ordinairement dans ses Tableaux les gens de la ville avec ceux de la campagne”; Jugement d’une demoiselle de quatorze ans sur le Sallon de 1777 (Paris: Quillau, 1777), 16, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 178.

  5. As pointed out in Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 480.

  6. “Les conditions necessaires à une bonne nourrice se tirent ordinairement de son âge, du tems [sic] qu’elle est accouchée, de la constitution de son corps, particulierement de ses mamelles, de la nature de son lait, & enfin de ses mœurs”; “Nourrice,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. Denis Diderot (1765; repr. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1966), 11:260.

  7. Aubry’s submissions to the Salon of 1777 are “no. 127. Portrait d’un Artiste” and “no. 128. Plusieurs petits Tableaux, sous le même numéro”; Salon livret, 25. Fossey has identified two of the latter as L’Heureuse mère and L’Enfant effrayé; Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 26. Fossey also catalogued two drawings for the composition, both lost; Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” nos. 103 and 104, pp. 474–76. See report of examination by Nathan Sutton, NAMA conservation intern, November 2, 2009, NAMA curatorial files.

  8. MMI, exh. cat. (London: Hall and Knight, 2001), 154–57; Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2005), 226–29, fig. 87.

  9. “M. Aubry fera donc le genre familier: il y a quelque mérite dans ses productions; mais il est beaucoup trop maniéré . . . ; au surplus, il fera mieux de se livrer au portrait”; La Prêtresse, ou Nouvelle Manière de Prédire ce qui est arrivé (Rome: les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1777), 17, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 189, p. 17.

  10. “Les deux époux . . . forment aussi en Tableau où la vigeur, l’effet & l’expression se font également admirer”; Lettres Pittoresques, à l’Occasion des Tableaux Exposés au Sallon, en 1777 (Paris: P. F. Gueffier, [1777]), 22, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 190, p. 22.

  11. “Mal peint: les couleurs en sont épaisses & plaquées”; Les Tableaux du Louvre, Où Il n’y a Pas Le Sens Commun, Histoire Véritable (Paris: Cailleau, 1777), 17, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 186.

  12. “Quant au sujet, je n’en dirai rien, parce que des sentimens [sic] qui tiennent à un usage aussi peu dans la Nature que celui de confier ses enfans [sic] à une femme mercenaire, ne doivent pas être fort naturels, & par conséquent ne peuvent toucher un home raisonnable”; Les Tableaux du Louvre, Où Il n’y a Pas Le Sens Commun, Histoire Véritable, 17.

  13. For a good analysis, see Bernadette Fort, “Greuze and the Ideology of Infant Nursing,” in Anja Müller, Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006), 117–34.

  14. “Indépendamment du rapport ordinaire du tempérament de l’enfant à celui de la mere [sic], celle-ci est bien plus propre à prendre un tendre soin de son enfant, qu’une femme empruntée qui n’est animée que par la récompense d’un loyer mercenaire, souvent fort modique. Concluons que la mere [sic] d’un enfant, quoique moins bonne nourrice, est encore préférable à une étrangere [sic]”; “Nourrice,” in Diderot, Encyclopédie, 261.

  15. See, for example, Fossey, “Étienne Aubry, Peintre du Roi,” 480.

  16. Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment, 192.

  17. “All are united in the warmth of this charming moment of the first filial embrace, which serves as a metaphor for the idea of universal brotherhood which flourished in this period”; Eric M. Zafran, The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1983), 119. See also Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment, 192, with the fair point that such meaning could have been posthumously applied to the engraving: “Some such didactic and even symbolic significance seems to underlie the title that Aubry’s composition acquired when the print after it [sic] appeared in 1787.”

  18. “Notice sur Jacques-Augustin de Silvestre,” in François Léandre Regnault-Delalande, Catalogue Raisonné d’Objets d’Arts du Cabinet de Feu M. de Silvestre, ci-devant Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel, et Maitre à Dessiner des Enfans de France (Paris: [François Léandre Regnault-Delalande], 1810), iii–viii. The works by Aubry are catalogued under nos. 1 (Coriolanus), 2 (First Lesson), and 166–72 (drawings). The title given for the Kansas City painting, Les Adieux d’un villageois et de sa femme au nourrisson que le père et la mère leur retirent, has caused confusion with the Williamstown Farewell to the Wet Nurse (Fig. 1), but the dimensions recorded (29.6 x 39 pouces [inches]) match the Kansas City painting, and the painting is described as the one engraved by Delaunay under the title La première Leçon d’Amitié fraternelle.

Technical Entry
Technical entry forthcoming.

Documentation
Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Provenance

provenance

Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Jacques Augustin de Silvestre (1719–1809), Paris, by 1787–1811;

Silvestre’s posthumous sale, Catalogue Raisonné d’Objets d’Arts du Cabinet de Feu M. de Silvestre, ci-devant Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel, et Maitre à Dessiner des Enfans [sic] de France, Hôtel de la Rochefoucault, Paris, February 28–March 23, 1811, no. 2, erroneously as Les Adieux d’un villageois et de sa femme au nourrisson que le père et la mère leur retirent [1];

Évrard Charlemagne Rhoné (Valenciennes, 1782–Paris, 1861), by May 7, 1861 [2];

Purchased from Rhoné’s posthumous sale, La Belle et Riche Collection de Tableaux Anciens et Modernes, des Écoles Flamande, Hollandaise et Française, Formant la Galerie de feu M. Évrard Rhoné, à Paris, 3 rue Drouot,  Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs, Paris, May 7, 1861, no. 74, as Visite à la Nourrice, by Symphorien Casimir Joseph Boittelle (1813/1816–1897), May 7, 1861–April 25, 1866 [3];

Boittelle’s sale, Tableaux de l’École Française composant la Collection de M. Boittelle, Sénateur, Ancien Préfet de Police, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 24–25, 1866, no. 1, as La Première Leçon d’Amitié fraternelle;

Georges Wildenstein (1892–1963), Paris, by 1925;

Presumably sold by Wildenstein to his brother-in-law, Louis Isaac Paraf (b. 1871), Paris, by March 20, 1928–April 1929 [4];

Purchased from Paraf by D. A. Hoogendijk and Co., Amsterdam, stock number O. S. 855, as La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle, April 1929–December 27, 1932 [5];

Purchased from Hoogendijk by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, as Family Scene, 1932.

Notes

[1] The dimensions given in the catalogue entry—“H. 29 p. 61., L. 37 p.”—are much closer to the Nelson-Atkins painting than to those of the same title by Etienne Aubry at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, and The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Further confirming this reference to NAMA’s painting is the inclusion in the lot description of an engraved reproduction of the painting by Nicolas Delaunay titled La première Leçon d’Amitié fraternelle, which was made after the Kansas City painting. See also Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, “Quelques Tableaux de Genre Inédits par Étienne Aubry (1745–1781),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 2, no. 5 (1925): 82.

[2] [Alban Jules] Lambert, “Inventaire d’après décès de M. Rhoné,” April 26, 1861, Archives nationales, Paris, Minutier central des notaires de Paris, étude CXXII, cote 2094, folio 9, no. 155, as La Visite à la nourrice [photocopy in The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Collectors Files, Evrard Charlemagne Rhoné].

[3] This collector has been listed as Symphorien Casimir Joseph Boittelle and alternately as Edouard Charles Joseph Boittelle.

[4] Correspondence from Eliot Rowlands, Wildenstein and Co., New York, to Meghan Gray, NAMA, May 12, 2011 and June 28, 2011, NAMA curatorial files. Rowlands conjectures that Wildenstein may have bought the picture for Paraf.

[5] See D. A. Hoogendijk stock card, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague, Hoogendijk archives, as La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle. While the painting was in possession of Hoogendijk, he lent it to E. F. Heylel [?], Berlin, from May–June 1930.

Related Works
Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Etienne Aubry, Les adieux à la nourrice (Farewell to the Nurse), ca. 1776–1777, oil on canvas, 20 7/16 x 24 3/4 in. (51.9 x 62.8 cm), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

Etienne Aubry, Parting with a Wet-Nurse, 1777, oil on canvas, 20 1/2 x 24 13/16 in. (52 x 63 cm), The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Reproductions
Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Nicolas Delaunay, after Etienne Aubry, Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle, 1787, engraving, 18 13/16 x 24 1/2 in. (47.8 x 62.2 cm), first proof image only, second proof image and colophon, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Preparatory Works
Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Etienne Aubry, L’Heureuse famille (The Happy Family), pencil heightened with white on paper, 16 5/16 x 8 11/16 in. (41.5 x 22 cm), private collection, location unknown, cited in Caroline Fossey, “Etienne Aubry: Peintre du Roi, 1745–1781” (master’s thesis, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1989), no. 103, p. 474.

Etienne Aubry, La Visite à la nourrice (The Visit to the Nurse), ca. 1776, sepia wash on paper, 15 3/8 x 18 7/8 in. (39 x 48 cm), location unknown, illustrated in Caroline Fossey, “Etienne Aubry: Peintre du Roi, 1745–1781” (master’s thesis, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1989), no. 104, pp. 474–76.

Known Copies

copies

Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Attributed to Etienne Aubry, The Visit (also called La Visite à la Nourrice and La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle), copy in reverse, oil on canvas, 19 x 24 1/2 in. (48 x 62 cm), location unknown, illustrated in Objets d’Art Anciens des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles provenant pour la plupart de l’ancienne Collection du Baron Carl Mayer de Rothschild et appartenant à Madame de X . . . . (Paris: Galerie Charpentier, March 30, 1935), no. 82.

Attributed to Etienne Aubry, La visite à la nourrice (The Visit to the Nurse), copy in reverse, oil on canvas, 24 x 27 15/16 in. (61 x 71 cm), location unknown, illustrated in Importants Tableaux Anciens des XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe Siècles notamment par: Constantin Guys, J.-B. Huet, Nicolas Loire, Demachy, J.-B. Peronneau, Peter Laer, Van Swanewelt, Van Falens, Roux, Michel Drolling, Théodore Géricault, Trorelli, Hubert Robert, Le Prince, Eugène Delacroix, Etc.; Objets d’Art des XVIIIe et XIXe Siècles; Très Bel Ameublement principalement du XVIIIe Siècle dont la plupart estampillés des grands Maitres-Ebénistes de leur temps tels que: Roussel, Avril, Delporte, Gourdin, Mauter, Criaerd, Lapic, Elleume, Fromageau, Dusautoy, Cordier, etc . . . ; Très Belle Tapisserie de Coypel (XVIIe Siècle), Tapis d’Orient (Versailles: Palais des Congrès, June 2, 1971), no. 62.

Attributed to Etienne Aubry, La visite à la nourrice (The Visit to the Nurse), oil on canvas, 19 11/16 x 25 9/16 in. (50 x 65 cm), location unknown, cited in Tableaux Anciens et Modernes; Portraits des Écoles Française, Flamande, Hollandaise, Italienne, etc.; Par ou Attribués à P. Alboni, E. Aubry, L. Boilly, P. Breughel, J.-B. Charpentier, Ch. Coypel, de Condamy, S. de Vos, G. Doré, M. Drolling, Giran-Max, Grimoud, D. Hals, J. Jordaens, Le Nain, Michel, M. Mierevelt, N. Molenaer, B. Monnoyer, A. Point, F. Pourbus, J. Ruisdael, P. P. Rubens, F. Snyders, A. van Dyck, J. Van Goyen, B. Van der Helst, M. Van Loo, J. Vernet, E. Vartz, etc., etc., (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, December 7, 1904), no. 2, unpaginated.

Attributed to Etienne Aubry, Visite à la nourrice (Visit to the Nurse), 18th century, copy in reverse, oil on canvas, Musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie de Châlons-en-Champagne.

Exhibitions

exhibitions

Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Salon de 1777, Paris, opened August 25, 1777, no. 125, as Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné.

La Vie Parisienne au XVIIIe Siècle, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, March 20–April 30, 1928, no. 1, as La Visite à la Nourrice.

Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst door de Vereeniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in Nederland, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, July–August 1929, no. 2, as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

D. A. Hoogendijk en Co.: Oude Schilderijen, Oude Teekeningen, D. A. Hoogendijk en Co., Amsterdam, October 1929, no. 2, as La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Tentoonstelling van Oude Schilderijen, Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, Amsterdam, November 16–December 9, 1929; Pulchri Studio, The Hague, December 14, 1929–January 6, 1930, no. 2, as La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Exhibition of Figure Paintings, University of Iowa, Iowa City, November 5–30, 1936, no. 1, as The Visit.

Pictures of Everyday Life: Genre Painting in Europe, 1500–1900, Carnegie Institute, Department of Fine Arts, Pittsburgh, October 14–December 12, 1954, no. 67, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

The Century of Mozart, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 15–March 4, 1956, no. 1, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Homage to Mozart: A Loan Exhibition of European Painting, 1750–1800, Honoring the 200th Anniversary of Mozart’s Birth, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT, March 22–April 29, 1956, no. 1, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Great Stories in Art, The Denver Art Museum, February 13–March 27, 1966, no cat.

Genre, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 5–May 15, 1983, no. 19, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, October 5–December 31, 1983, no. 54, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Farewell to the Wet Nurse: Etienne Aubry and Images of Breast-Feeding in the Eighteenth-Century France, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, September 12, 1998–January 3, 1999, no. 3, as First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

George Washington: Military Leader, Statesman, and Legend, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, December 12, 2003–April 11, 2004, no cat.

References

references

Citation

Chicago:

Meghan L. Gray, “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

MLA:

Gray, Meghan L. “Etienne Aubry, The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship, 1773 or 1775,” documentation. French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2022. doi: 10.37764/78973.5.302.4033.

Explication des Peintures, Sculptures et Gravures, de Messieurs de l’Académie Royale, exh. cat. (Paris: Herissant, 1777), 25, as Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné [repr., in H. W. Janson, Catalogues of the Paris Salon 1673 to 1881, vol. 5, Paris Salons de 1775, 1777, 1779, 1781, 1783 (New York: Garland, 1977), unpaginated].

Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Lettre à la margrave Caroline-Louise de Bade,” [October 24, 1777], Les Trois Sallons de 1773, 1777 et 1779: Lettres à Son Altesse Sérénissime Madame la Margrave Régnante de Bade, Manuscript Accession 84, P. S. du Pont de Nemours Letters, p. 79, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE, as la visite à l’Enfant en nourrice.

Lettres Pittoresques, à l’Occasion des Tableaux Exposés au Sallon, en 1777 (Paris: P. F. Gueffier, [1777]), 22, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 190, as Les deux époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice.

Les Tableaux du Louvre, Où Il n’y a Pas Le Sens Commun, Histoire Véritable (Paris: Cailleau, 1777), p. 17, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Deloynes, vol. 10, no. 186, as deux Époux qui vont voir leur enfant en nourrice.

Pierre Jean Baptiste Nougaret [Jean Charles François Bidault de Montigny], Étrennes pittoresques, allégoriques et critiques; opuscule mélangé, Dont une partie peut faire suite et matière aux Annales de Nos Beaux-Arts (Paris: Veuve Duchesne et Cailleau, 1778), 116 [repr., in Paul Lacroix, “État de l’Académie Saint-Luc, au Moment de sa suppression, en 1776,”  Revue Universelle des Arts 16 (October 1862–March 1863): 307].

[Carmontelle], Coup de Patte sur le Sallon de 1779, Dialogue; précédé et suivi de Réflexions sur la Peinture (Athens: Cailleau, 1779), 16.

Journal de Paris, no. 307 (November 3, 1787): 1323.

François Léandre Regnault-Delalande, Catalogue Raisonné d’Objets d’Arts du Cabinet de Feu M. de Silvestre, ci-devant Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel, et Maitre à Dessiner des Enfans [sic] de France (Paris: [François Léandre Regnault-Delalande], 1810), 2, erroneously as Les Adieux d’un villageois et de sa femme au nourrisson que le père et la mère leur retirent.

[Alban Jules] Lambert, “Inventaire d’après décès de M. Rhoné,” April 26, 1861, Archives nationales, Paris, Minutier central des notaires de Paris, étude CXXII, cote 2094, folio 9, as La Visite à la nourrice [photocopy in The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Collectors Files, Evrard Charlemagne Rhoné].

Catalogue de La Belle et Riche Collection de Tableaux Anciens et Modernes, des Écoles Flamande, Hollandaise et Française, Formant la Galerie de feu M. Évrard Rhoné, à Paris (Paris, 1861), 38, S3.

Pierre Defer, Catalogue Général des Ventes Publiques de Tableaux et Estampes Depuis 1737 jusqu’à nos Jours; Contenant: 1e Les Prix des plus beaux Tableaux, Dessins, Miniatures, Estampes, Ouvrages à figures et Livres sur les Arts; 2e des Notes Biographiques formant un Dictionnaire Des Peintres et des Graveurs les plus célèbres de toutes les Écoles, part 2, Tableaux, vol. 1, Dessins, Gouaches et Miniatures (Paris: Aubry, Clement, et Rapilly, 1865), 157.

Catalogue des Tableaux de l’École Française composant la Collection de M. Boittelle, Sénateur, Ancien Préfet de Police (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1866), IV–V, 1.

Pierre Defer, Catalogue Général des Ventes Publiques, de Tableaux et Estampes Depuis 1737 jusqu’à nos Jours; Contenant: 1e Les Prix des plus beaux Tableaux, Dessins, Miniatures, Estampes, Ouvrages à figures et Livres sur les Arts; 2e des Notes Biographiques formant un Dictionnaire Des Peintres et des Graveurs les plus célèbres de toutes les Écoles, part 2, Tableaux, vol. 2, Dessins, Gouaches et Miniatures (Paris: Aubry, Clement, et Rapilly, 1868), 562, as Première Leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Julius Meyer and Wilhelm Schmidt, eds., Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1878), 378, as Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Edmond de Goncourt, La Maison d’un Artiste (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1881), 1:41, erroneously as Les Adieux à la Nourrice.

Émile Bellier de la Chavignerie and Louis Auvray, Dictionnaire Général des Artistes de l’École Française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours: Architectes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs et Lithographes (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1882), 1:25, as Jeunes époux visitant leur enfant chez sa nourrice [repr., in Émile Bellier de la Chavignerie and Louis Auvray, Dictionnaire Général des Artistes de l’École Française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours vol. 1 (New York: Garland, 1979), unpaginated].

Adolphe Siret, Dictionnaire historique et raisonné des peintres de toutes les écoles depuis l’origine de la peinture jusqu’à nos jours, 3rd ed. (Brussels: Chez les Principaux Libraires, 1883), 1:42, as première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

H. Hombron, Catalogue des Tableaux, Dessins et Gravures exposés dans les galeries du Musée de la Ville de Brest (Brest: L. Évian-Roger, 1891), 9.

Dr. Karl Obser, “Lettres sur les Salons de 1773, 1777 et 1779 adressées par Du Pont de Nemours à la margrave Caroline-Louise de Bade,” Archives de l’art français: recueil de documents inédits (Paris: Jean Schemit, 1908): 2:58–59, as Visite à l’enfant en nourrice.

Louis Hautecœur, “Le Sentimentalisme dans la Peinture Française de Greuze à David (Deuxième et Dernier Article),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1, no. 621 (March 1909): 276, as La Première leçon de l’amitié fraternelle.

Emile Dacier, “Livret du Salon de 1777 (Cabinet des Étampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale),” Catalogues de Ventes et Livrets de Salons illustrés par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, vols. 3–4 (Paris: Société de Reproduction des Dessins de Maitres, 1910), 50, unpaginated.

H[ippolyte] Mireur, Dictionnaire des Ventes d’Art faites en France et à l’Étranger pendant les XVIIIme et XIXme siècles (Paris: Maison d’Éditions d’Œuvres Artistiques, 1911), 1:66, as Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle and Visite à la nourrice.

Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, “Quelques Tableaux de Genre Inédits par Étienne Aubry (1745–1781),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 11, no. 754 (February 1925): 79–80, 82–83, (repro.), as Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Louis Réau, Histoire de la Peinture Française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: G. van Oest, 1926), 2:57, as la Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

La Vie Parisienne au XVIIIe Siècle, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1928), 7.

François Boucher, “L’Exposition de la Vie Parisienne au XVIIIe Siècle au Musée Carnavalet,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 17, no. 786 (April 1928): 206–07, 406, (repro.), as La Visite à la Nourrice.

François Boucher, “Une Exposition au Musée Carnavalet: La Vie Parisienne au XVIIIe Siècle,” Le Gaulois Artistique 2, no. 19 (April 7, 1928): 165, as Visite à la nourrice.

La Vie Parisienne au XVIIIe Siècle: Conférences du Musée Carnavalet (1928) (Paris: Payot, 1928), (repro.), as La Visite à la Nourrice.

Art News 27, no. 38 (July 13, 1929): 12, (repro.), as First Lesson of Brotherly Love.

Catalogus van de Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst door de Vereeniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in Nederland, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: H. J. Koersen, 1929), 1, (repro.).

C. H. de Jonge, “De Nederlandsche Schilderijen op de Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst te Amsterdam,” Oude Kunst 7, no. 2 (October 1929): 53.

D. A. Hoogendijk en Co.: Oude Schilderijen, Oude Teekeningen, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: D. A. Hoogendijk, 1929), 5, (repro.).

Tentoonstelling van Oude Schilderijen, Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: D. A. Hoogendijk, 1929), 5, (repro.).

advertisement, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 55, no. 321 (December 1929): lx, (repro.), as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Tentoonstelling van Oude Schilderijen,“Pulchri Studio,” ’s-Gravenhage, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: D. A. Hoogendijk, 1929), 5, (repro.).

Oude Schilderijen: Catalogus van eenige schilderijen en een beeldhouwwerk door de firma D. A. Hoogendijk en Co. te Amsterdam afgestaan voor de tentoonstelling, die de “Vereeniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in Nederland” gedurende de maanden juli en augustus 1929, in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam zal Houden (Amsterdam: D. A. Hoogendijk, [1929]), unpaginated, (repro.), as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Karl T. Parker, “Etienne Aubry (1745–1781): Study of a Standing Male Figure,” Old Master Drawings 5, [no. 18] (September 1930): 38, as La Première Leçon d’Amitié fraternelle.

Erna Schiefenbusch, “L’Influence de Jean-Jacques Rousseau sur les Beaux-Arts en France,” trans. Elie Moroy, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 19 (1930): 139, as Visites à la nourrice and Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

M[inna] K. P[owell], “The Nelson Art Gallery a Lure, Although Incomplete: Exterior Finishing Touches and Landscaping Bring Many Visitors—The Opening Date Still an Uncertainty,” Kansas City Star 53, no. 107 (January 2, 1933): 8, as Interior Scene.

Kansas City Star 53, no. 113 (January 8, 1933): 4, (repro.), as A French Cottage Interior.

“Nelson Gallery of Art Special Number,” Art Digest 8, no. 5 (December 1, 1933): 21, 25, (repro.), as Interior Scene.

“Complete Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings,” in “The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City Special Number,” Art News 32, no. 10 (December 9, 1933): 28, as Interior Scene.

Alfred M. Frankfurter, “The Paintings in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art,” in “The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City Special Number,” Art News 32, no. 10 (December 9, 1933): 30.

Luigi Vaiani, “Art Dream Becomes Reality with Official Gallery Opening at Hand: Critic Views Wide Collection of Beauty as Public Prepares to Pay its First Visit to Museum,” Kansas City Journal Post 80, no. 187 (December 11, 1933): 7.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 46, (repro.), as Interior Scene.

A. J. Philpott, “Kansas City Now in Art Center Class: Nelson Gallery, Just Opened, Contains Remarkable Collection of Paintings, Both Foreign and American,” Boston Sunday Globe 125, no. 14 (January 14, 1934): 16, as Interior Scene.

“A Thrill to Art Expert: M. Jamot is Generous in his Praise of Nelson Gallery,” Kansas City Times 97, no. 247 (October 15, 1934): 7.

Exhibition of Figure Paintings, exh. cat. ([Iowa City]: University of Iowa, 1936), unpaginated.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 167, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Louis Hautecœur, Les Peintres de la Vie Familiale: Évolution d’un Thème (Paris: Éditions de la Galerie Charpentier, 1945), 80, as La première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Michel Florisoone, Le Dix-Huitième Siècle (Paris: Pierre Tisné, 1948), 71, (repro.), as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Paul L. Grigaut, “Marmontel’s ‘Shepherdess of the Alps’ in Eighteenth Century Art,” Art Quarterly (The Detroit Institute of Arts) 12, no. 1 (Winter 1949): 40–41, 44, 46, 47n19, (repro.), as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Pictures of Everyday Life: Genre Painting in Europe, 1500–1900, exh. cat. (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, Department of Fine Arts, 1954), (repro.).

Patrick J. Kelleher, “The Century of Mozart: January 15 through March 4, 1956,” exh. cat., Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 1 (January 1956): 13, 25, 58, (repro.).

Mario Praz, The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction, trans. Angus Davidson (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege and Oxford University Press, 1956), 26.

Evan H. Turner, Homage to Mozart: A Loan Exhibition of European Painting, 1750–1800, Honoring the 200th Anniversary of Mozart’s Birth, exh. cat. (Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1956), 7, 15, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 114, (repro.), as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Germain Bazin, et al., Kindlers Malerei Lexikon (Zurich: Kindler, 1964), 1:148, as Die erste brüderliche Lektion.

Jacques Thuillier and Albert Châtelet, French Painting: From Le Nain to Fragonard, trans. James Emmons (Geneva: Skira, 1964), 229, as The First Lesson of Brotherly Friendship.

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 539, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship [repr., in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 71, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship].

Anita Brookner, Greuze: The Rise and Fall of an Eighteenth-Century Phenomenon (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1972), 142, (repro.), as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 133, 136, (repro.), as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Phyllis Hattis, Four Centuries of French Drawings in The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1977), 215, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Elizabeth LaMotte Cates Milroy, “Keeping Abreast of Etienne Aubry” (master’s thesis, Williams College, 1979), 6, 12, 20, viii, (repro.).

Tom L. Freudenheim, ed., American Museum Guides: Fine Arts (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 112, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Ross E. Taggart and Laurence Sickman, Genre, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 13.

Eric M. Zafran, The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1983), 107, 118–19, (repro.).

Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 215, as The First Lesson in Brotherly Feeling.

David Wakefield, French Eighteenth-Century Painting (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1984), 136, as First Lesson in Brotherly Love.

Jacques Foucart, ed., Musée du Louvre: Nouvelles acquisitions du Département des Peintures (1983–1986) (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1987), 124, (repro.), as La Visite à la nourrice.

Important Old Master Drawings: The Properties of The Bernasconi Family and from various sources (London: Christie, Manson and Woods, December 8, 1987), 97, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Pierre Rosenberg and Marion C. Stewart, French Paintings, 1500–1825: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1987), 105, as First Lesson in Fraternal Friendship.

Caroline Fossey, “Etienne Aubry: Peintre du Roi, 1745–1781” (master’s thesis, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1989), no. 105, pp. 25–26, 474–83, as La Visite à la Nourrice or Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Ursula Hilberath, “Ce sexe est sûr du nous trouver sensible”: Studien zu Weiblichkeitsentwürfen in der französischen Malerei der Aufklärungszeit (1733–1789) (Alfter, Germany: VDG, Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1993), 112, 114, 338, 398, (repro.), as Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourricon par son frère aîné.

Patricia R. Ivinski et al., Farewell to the Wet Nurse: Etienne Aubry and Images of Breast-Feeding in Eighteenth-Century France, exh. cat. (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1998), 8–9, 12, 14, 17n4, 21, 41, (repro.).

MMI, exh. cat. (London: Hall and Knight, 2001), 156, as La Première Leçon d’Amitié Fraternelle.

Colin B. Bailey, Philip Conisbee, and Thomas W. Gaehtgens, The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of Canada, 2003), 397, 399, as Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfants en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourrisson par son frère ainé.

Gabriela Jasin, “‘De Nos Ambitieux, Vous Êtes Le Symbole’: Aspects of Childhood in Eighteenth-Century French Art” (master’s thesis, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, 2003), 96n200, as La première leçon d’amitie [sic] fraternelle.

Pierre Sanchez, Dictionnaire des Artistes Exposant dans les Salons des XVII et XVIIIeme Siècles à Paris et en Provence, 1673–1800 (Dijon: L’Échelle de Jacob, 2004), 1:97, as Deux Époux, allant voir un de leurs enfans [sic] en nourrice, font embrasser le petit nourriçon par son frère aîné.

Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (Cambridge, U. K.: University of Cambridge, 2005), 191–92, 194, (repro.), as La Prémière [sic] leçon de l’amitié fraternelle.

Emmanuel-Charles Bénézit, Dictionary of Artists (Paris: Gründ, 2006), 1:820, as The First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship and Visiting the Wet Nurse.

Philip Conisbee, ed., French Genre Painting in the Eighteenth Century (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2007), 239n35.

J. F. Heijbroek and A. Th. P. van Griensven, Kunst, kennis en kwaliteit: De Vereeniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in Nederland 1911-heden (Zwolle: Waanders, 2007), 44, (repro.).

Karen Yeager Kimball, “Milk Machines: Exploring the Breastfeeding Apparatus” (master’s thesis, University of North Texas, 2008), 32, as First Lesson of Fraternal Friendship.

Ryan Lee Whyte, “Painting as Social Conversation: The petit sujet in the Ancien Régime” (PhD diss., University of Toronto (Canada), 2008), 185, 320, (repro.).

Marie‐France Morel, “Images de nourrices dans la France des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 46, no. 6 (December 2010): 805, as Première leçon d’amitié fraternelle.

Gal Ventura, Maternal Breast-Feeding and Its Substitutes in Nineteenth-Century French Art (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2018), (repro.).