The Messenger

1815

A young woman interrupts her needlework to read a letter delivered by an errand boy. Drölling carefully records the details of the setting, from the portrait on the back wall to the caged bird by the window and the bouquet of flowers on the sill. This domestic interior, gently illuminated by light from the window, recalls seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, which were celebrated in nineteenth-century France.

Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	17 15/16 x 21 15/16 in. (45.5 x 55.8 cm) Frame: 23 7/8 x 27 5/16 x 1 5/8 in. (60.6 x 69.4 x 4.1 cm)
Object Number	1955.724
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	Off View

Image Caption

Martin Drölling, The Messenger, 1815, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.724

Select Bibliography

Cunningham, Charles C., et al. The Elegant Academics: Chroniclers of 19th-Century Parisian Life. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: The Clark, 1974. Ludig, Sandra G. Between the Lines: Ladies and Letters at the Clark. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1982. Berrall, Julia S. A History of Flower Arrangement. New York: Viking Press, 1968. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Probably Deleuze collection (until 1903, his sale Drouot, Paris, 12 Jan. 1903, no. 4, as Le Messager ou l’heureuse nouvelle); [Knoedler, Paris, sold to Clark, 3 Feb. 1922, as The Messenger]; Robert Sterling Clark (1922–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.