Rose-Marie Pruvost Paints The Louvre

Who was Rose-Marie Pruvost (b. 1897 - ?) and what was she thinking about as she sketched at the Louvre? Information about the artist has proved elusive but we can attempt to see what she is telling us.

Closest to us is a museum guard, leaning back as he sits on a bench, perhaps a little tired or bored on this quiet day in the Grand Gallery. No need for the Aphrodite, modeled after Praxiteles, to shield her nudity. He's seen it before, he'll see it again, she needn't be so coy on his account.
Next Pruvost leads our eye to a student at work in his blue smock, making a copy of one of the Italian paintings that Louis XIV collected wholesale during his reign (1643-1710) when the Louvre was a royal residence. Built c. 1595-161o on the site of a former fortress, as were so many homes of the aristocracy, we can guess the long gallery's original function as a connecting hall with the Tuileries next door. Between then and now the Grand Gallery suffered indignities: used as the royal map room in the 1700s by the last Louis (the ill-fated XVIth); gutted by fire during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, and then restored. And finally a group, perhaps a family with a small child in tow, gathered around a pedestal holding something we cannot make out. And an unseen painter, clearly enjoying recording them all.

In contrast to the bustle of activity on the first floor, ascend Hector Lefuel's (1810-1881) Second Empire Mollien Staircase to the Salle Mollien (named for one of Napoleon's minsters). You might expect the Escalier to dominate, but in Pruvost's painting we get only a glimpse at the far end. In Rene-Gabriel Ojeda's photograph, admire the detail of Benevenuto Cellini's bronze Nymph, created in the 16th Century and brought to the Louvre from Fontainebleau, another royal residence on the outskirts of Paris, in 1857.

The walls, decorated with allegorical stuccos celebrating the arts, may have provided Pruvost with food for thought. To have such a well-proportioned space to oneself, if only for a while, is something to be commemorated. Through the archways on our left lies the Cafe Mollien. Perhaps sounds of glass and silverware drift out into Salle Mollien, punctuating the active hum of pencil and brush.