Galerie Magdeleine deals in Old Master paintings and drawings from the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth. Works are selected for their strength, pictorial quality and historical resonance in equal measure.
The gallery’s practice is built on close research: provenance enquiry, comparative study and archival work that together yield fresh contributions to attribution.
Located in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the gallery focuses on overlooked works, sometimes previously unrecorded. Its guiding conviction is that scholarship and a trained eye are inseparable, and that both should be visible in every work on the walls.
Hortense HAUDEBOURT-LESCOT
(1784 – 1845)
A man condemned to death being exhorted by a Capuchin friar as he sets off for his execution
Between 1830 and 1839.
Oil on canvas.
H: 32.5; 40.5 cm.
Signed lower right: haudebourt Lescot
The scene depicts the poignant moment just before the execution of a chained criminal. A friar urges him to die as a good Christian, whilst his executioners wait in the background.
This painting is an autograph reduction of Un condamné à mort exhorté par un capucin au moment de partir pour le supplice (Louvre Museum, Inv. 5287), which the artist presented at the 1819 Salon. That painting had drawn critical acclaim for its dramatic and vigorous style, with commentators expressing surprise that ‘such a composition should have come from a woman’s hand’ (Jal, 1819).
Following the exhibition, Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot’s talent was publicly recognised when the Maison du Roi acquired the work.
However, barely a decade after its completion, the painting showed signs of irreversible damage caused by the excessive use of Judean bitumen, an unstable pigment that caused extensive cracking and a darkening of the backgrounds.
In a rare move whilst the artist was still alive, Haudebourt-Lescot was commissioned to restore her own painting. Aware of the gradual deterioration of a key work in her career, she produced this reduced version, thereby preserving the memory of her composition.
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