Aimée BRUNE-PAGÈS
 (Paris, 1803 – Paris, 1866)

 The invalid's alms

 Oil on canvas
 Signed lower left
 71 x 58 cm
 1834

 Exhibitions :
  
 Paris Salon of 1835 under number 270
  
 Chatou, Musée Fournaise, “The age of reason seen by painters in the 19th century”, May 5-November 4, 2018
 Madame Brune, born Aimée Marie Alexandrine Pagès, a student of Meynier, is one of the French women who distinguished herself most in the arts, whether under the Restoration, the July Monarchy or the Second Empire. While still young, she obtained several government commissions, and since then, she has rarely let an exhibition pass without reaping new successes. She exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1822 to 1833 under her name as a young lady, then from 1834 until her last participation in 1853 under her married name. She obtained various medals at the Paris and provincial Salons, including in particular a first class gold medal at the 1841 Salon.
 In the galleries of Versailles, we see Madame Brune's Portrait of the Lord of Pontchartrain, executed after a painting kept at the Château de Beauregard; the Portrait of Mademoiselle Leclermont after Nattier – and that of Lieutenant General Count Morand – at the Troyes Museum, the Vœu, given by the government after the Salon of 1837; at the Orléans Museum, a study of a Young Girl Kneeling.
 Ten years her senior, Aimée Pagès married Christian Brune (1793 – 1849) on July 24, 1833, who was also a painter and a drawing professor at the École Polytechnique. It is very likely that they had the opportunity to collaborate on some of their paintings, she being gifted for figures, he more for landscapes.
 The artist died in Paris on August 11, 1866, in his sixty-third year.

 Museums : Amiens, Bordeaux, Dijon, Eu, Laval, Nîmes, Orléans, Paris (Carnavalet Museum, Army Museum, Louvre Museum), Troyes, Versailles…

 A young mother holding her youngest child in her arms reaches out to ask for alms from the disabled soldier. The latter only gives the coin to the eldest boy. The old man's face is full of authority and compassion. He seems to be telling this very young boy that he is responsible for his family. Only the few tears in the clothes and the sadness of the faces evoke the misery that the mother and her three children must face. The harshness of the characters' existence is softened by the beauty of the landscape and the technical delicacy of the brushstrokes and the subtle tones of green.
 The scene contrasts youth with old age, poverty with infirmity, family with bachelor, but without any brutality. The characters are situated in a wooded clearing.
 Around 1830, the painter Jeanron proposed new images to denounce the growing poverty and pauperism in France. Workers' revolts multiplied and society at the time began to become aware of the risks incurred by poor children, such as abandonment and work from a very young age in factories.
 More classical, Aimée Brune Pagès takes up the compositions of family portraits in their garden which appeared at the end of the 18th century.
 Bibliography: “The Age of Reason as Seen by Painters in the 19th Century”, Musée Fournaise, Chatou, exhibition catalogue from May 5 to November 4, 2018 (p. 76 - 77).