Putti with a Medallion

Charles Dominique Joseph Eisen's first training was in Brussels and Valenciennes with his father, the painter François Eisen (1695–1778). In the early 1740s he entered the studio of the Parisian engraver Jacques Philippe Le Bas (1707–1783) and later he enjoyed the favor of Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), to whom he taught engraving. It was perhaps through her that Eisen was given various royal titles, such as painter and draftsman of the King's cabinet. He appears to have been a controversial figure: his refusal to pay the entry fee to the Académie de Saint-Luc on the grounds that he was too exceptional an artist led to the seizure of his studio in 1748, although he successfully sued and was admitted in 1750.

Painting was a secondary activity for Eisen; he was primarily a draftsman and illustrator, providing illustrations for about 400 books during his lifetime. He exhibited as many drawings and engravings at the Académie de Saint-Luc as he did paintings, and comparable features of his graphic works secure the attribution of these medallion figures. Here putti cluster around a fictive stone medallion, and the awkward treatment of their shoulders and bulging foreheads is distinctly Eisen's style. He enlivens the scenes with playful poses, swirling clouds, and flickering light.

Francesca Whitlum-Cooper 2010; updated by Katharine Baetjer 2013

[Georges Hoentschel, Paris, until 1906; sold to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1906)

Jeffrey H. Munger in Morgan : the collector : essays in honor of Linda Roth's 40th anniversary at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Stuttgart, p. 36, seen in fig.15.

Nicole Hoentschel et al. Georges Hoentschel. Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau, 1999, ill. pp. 163, 171, 176 (gallery installations), reproduces photographs of it hanging in Hoentschel's gallery on Boulevard Flandrin.

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 192–93, no. 57, ill. (color).