165 - Four buttons. Miniatures depicting views of the Ermenonville park,

Four buttons. Miniatures depicting views of the Ermenonville park, the estate of Marquis René de Girardin. On one of these buttons, one can recognize the tomb of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Several artists stayed in Ermenonville: Hubert Robert, Georges Frederic Meyer, Auguste Gandat, and others. One of them painted these buttons. Georges Frederic Meyer held a special position, as he became the Marquis’s children’s teacher; he painted Rousseau collecting plants and created numerous views of the park with great delicacy. He died there in 1779 and, in an exceptional privilege, was buried in the park. It is therefore to him, the estate’s official painter, that these four buttons are attributed. He is said to have painted them shortly before his death at the age of 44. At that time, it was customary for an artist attached to a princely household to create a series of buttons depicting a familiar place. We have seen this with Carmontelle. Diameter: 3.5 cm