“the friendly advice” by MADOU Jean-Baptiste

Oil on panel entitled « Le bon conseil », meaning the friendly advise. Two men are chatting in a pub. Signed lower right. Great condition. Sheet of on the back by the Old Hall Gallery of Sussex, certifying the work. This scene has also been executed as a print (l’illustration Européenne 1871 no.39 )

Size: H 20 x W 24cm – H 36 x W 43 cm

Jean-Baptiste Madou, mid 19th century Belgian School.

Lit : Painter of genre scenes, draughtsman, lithographer and aquafortist, Madou is a pupil of Pierre-Célestin François at the academy of Brussels. From 1814 to 1818, he worked as an expeditionary in the finance department of the Netherlands, then, until 1820, as a draughtsman-topographer in the war department. Noticed by the publisher Jobard, who invited him to his studio as a typographer, he anonymously produced plans, book illustrations, vignettes and portraits. It was only around 1830 that series of lithographs appeared in Brussels and Paris under his name. In 1836, he was awarded a gold medal at the Brussels Salon with the publication of “The Physionomy of Society in Europe from 1400 to the Present Day”. He showed a taste for historical reconstruction that can be found in “La vie des peintres de l’école flamande et hollandaise” (The life of painters of the Flemish and Dutch school) (1842). Madou exhibited a painting for the first time at the Brussels Salon of 1842. As in many of his earlier engravings, he treated genre scenes happening in the 18th century: cabaret scenes (“Le trouble-fête”, 1854, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels), everyday and popular scenes (“Les politiques au village”, 1871, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels). Not without humour at times, Madou evokes the past in the tradition of Flemish and Dutch genre painting. His son, Adolphe Madou (Brussels, 1834-1854) was also a painter.