Constance-Marie CHARPENTIER (1767 - 1849) A mother cared for by her children, 1804 Oil on original canvas, signed "C. M. Bondu Charpentier" lower left. 96 x 116.5 cm Provenance : - Collection of the artist - Exhibited at the Salon of 1804 "Une mère convalescente soignée par ses enfants" under number 94 - Inventory after François-Victor Charpentier's death of May 16, 1810 "Et deux tableaux dont le père aveugle et l'autre la mère convalescente dans leurs bordures dorées prisés et estimés cent quarante quatre francs" (And two paintings, one of which is the blind father and the other the convalescent mother in their gilded borders, valued at one hundred and forty-four francs). - Collection of the heirs' family, South of France - France, private collection. La citoyenne Charpentier or Mme Charpentier, as she is known in the booklets of the Paris Salons, is in fact the painter Constance-Marie Charpentier, née Bondelu. She entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825) at the age of 17, where she developed her artistic skills before fully devoting herself to genre painting with moral connotations, inspired by the writings of Denis Diderot and launched by the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725 - 1805) in the second half of the 18th century. At the heart of the sensibility of Constance-Marie Charpentier's work, our painting both illustrates maternal love as the ideal model of the French family, and evokes the artist's own life, as she herself lost her first daughter Constance-Julie prematurely at the age of nine, a year before our painting was created.