Andre Perinor (French, active in southeastern United States and Mexico, c. 1823-37), Portrait of...

Andre Perinor (French, active in southeastern United States and Mexico, c. 1823-37), Portrait of a Young Woman. Signed 'Perinor' at l.r.; backboard inscribed 'L M Keef' twice in pencil. Pastel and gouache on paper, tacked to yellow pine stretchers, in glazed mahogany frame with pine backboard lined with page of the Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard, dated 22 June 1928. Unframed, 14 x 17 1/4 in. Framed, 16 3/4 x 20 in. Footnotes: Provenance by 1928: Irvine A. Keefe (1861-1935), New Haven, New York. Note The earliest mention of French itinerant artist Andre Perinor in the United States appears in the Baltimore, Maryland, newspaper American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (20 November 1823): 'Mr. Perinor, Portrait Painter, Pupil of the Schools of Rome and Paris, has the honor to inform the public that he will take accurate LIKENESSES, at the low price of five dollars.' By 1825, he charged $10-$15 for ladies' portraits in pastels, a medium he thought achieved fresher tones and more naturalistic shading than oil paint, claiming to have discovered 'the secret of fixing [pastel] colors to canvas without altering them,' and rendering the image permanent in even the most humid climates (see Louisiana State Gazette, 7 April 1825). Indeed, the remarkably intact condition of this circa 1825 pastel portrait supports his assertion. Perinor simultaneously billed himself as an 'Air Balloonist, Professor of Amusing Natural Philosophy, and Pupil of the Academy of Fine Arts and Sciences, at Paris' in publicity for his ticketed demonstrations of 'Mathematical Recreations, Mechanical Optics, Catoptrics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Galvanism, Magnifying, and Interesting Amusement'. Staged in Baltimore and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1823), Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia (1824), New Orleans, Louisiana (1825 and 1835), and San Luis Potosí, Mexico (c. 1828-37), the shows featured interactive automatons, magic tricks, light shows, and an erupting artificial volcano called Mount Vesuvius. His most dramatic stunt, and likely the highlight of his career as a physicist-prestidigitator, was catching a live cannonball in a net during the Marquis de La Fayette's reunion visit to Richmond in the autumn of 1824. Only four works by Perinor have been documented to date, including two 1824 pastels of David and Rebecca (Kelley) Morris Baker of Richmond, in the collection of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, acc. no. 5956.1 and 5956.2. For Perinor's career in Central America, see María Isabel Monroy, Sueños, tentativas y posibilidades: extranjeros en San Luis Potosí, 1821-1845 (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 2004), p. 313; Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, Historia general de México, vol. III (Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, 1976), p. 62; and Auguste Génin, Les Français au Méxique (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Argo, 1931), p. 456-7. Perinor may have returned to France before 1841, when M. Lyrac reports on the magnetic experiments performed by 'M. Perinor' in a provincial village. See Gazette des hôpitaux civils et militaires 3/119 (2 October 1841): 487. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing