Zelia LENOIR
 (Paris, 1842 – Paris, 1919)

 The courtyard of the Mulberry Tree, at the Imperial School of Fine Arts in Paris

 Oil on canvas
 Monogrammed ZL and dated 1866 lower left and located École des Beaux Arts lower right
 89 x 65 cm

 Exhibition:
  
 Paris Salon of 1866, under number 1205
 Related work:
  
 Watercolor of the same subject, kept at the Musée d'Orsay
 The so-called mulberry courtyard of the École des Beaux-Arts corresponds to the former cloister of the Petits-Augustins convent, founded by Queen Margot at the very beginning of the 17th century. At the end of the Revolution, the convent became the Musée des Monuments Français, whose direction was entrusted to the young painter Alexandre Lenoir (1761 – 1839). In 1816, Louis XVIII closed the museum and assigned the place to the École Royale des Beaux-Arts; the architect François Debret (1777-1850), then his brother-in-law and student Félix Duban (1797-1870) decided to make the buildings a palace of Italian and neo-classical inspiration.

 The square courtyard of the mulberry tree, which owes its name to the Chinese mulberry tree that Alexandre Lenoir planted there, is located to the right of the school's main courtyard, when entering from rue Bonaparte; in 1836, Félix Duban gave it the appearance of a Pompeian atrium, notably by installing a fountain in the center. The walls of the covered gallery are decorated with a replica of the frieze of the Panathenaea of the Parthenon, which can be seen through the arcades.

 The date of execution of our painting falls within the short period (1864-1870) when the School was called “Imperial”, after having been “Royal” and before becoming “National”.

 Zélia Flore Lenoir was the granddaughter of Alexandre Lenoir and the daughter of Albert Lenoir (1801-1891), which makes her particularly linked to the history of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Her father, practically born in the former Musée des Monuments Français, joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1820, taught there from 1856 as Hippolyte Lebas' substitute, and was appointed Permanent Secretary in 1862; he occupied the chair of architectural history there from 1869.

 This dynastic ancestry could only lead her towards artistic activity, and we find at the Musée d'Orsay drawings made by her at the age of 14; like her father, she was a traveling artist, who drew the places where she stayed or visited: Normandy (Trouville in 1856, Veules les Roses in 1857, Jersey in 1869, Honfleur regularly between 1900 and 1912), Brittany (Vitré in 1865, Saint-Malo in 1908), Nord Pas-de-Calais (Cayeux in 1866, Ypres in 1871, Berck in 1912), the southwest (Eaux-Bonnes in 1913), Burgundy and Franche-Comté (Clamecy in 1919, Mijoux in 1867)...

 A pupil of her father and of A. Bernard, she took part in 1866 in what appears to be her only Salon, where she was domiciled at the Palais des Beaux-Arts.

 In 1874, she married the architect Louis-François-Philippe Boitte (1830, Paris – 1906, Fontainebleau), who had collaborated with her father a few years earlier, and who became chief architect of the Palace of Fontainebleau in 1877 (an exhibition was dedicated to him at Orsay in 1989, including drawings made in Greece and Italy in the early 1860s).

 We know of Louis Boitte's entire series (kept at Orsay) of studies, in pencil, wash or oil, on the subject of the Cour du mûrier, one of which uses exactly the same point of view and framing as the composition of his wife; these drawings, which seem to have been made around 1886, open the question of the mutual influences between the two spouses.

 With this painting, Zélia Lenoir produces a work that could almost be dated, at first glance, to the 1820s; it effectively exudes a mixture of "troubadour" spirit and architectural views such as painters such as Etienne Bouhot or Jean-Lubin Vauzelle, for example, could achieve at the time.

 A certain monumentality emerges from the whole, due to the absence of characters and the particular framing of the arcade (in the spirit of those of Louis-Pierre Baltard), tempered by the smallness of the place and softened by the soothing presence of the fountain.

 Acquired by the National School of Fine Arts in Paris