Merle, a friend and sometime rival of Bouguereau, was known for the sentimental images of contented rustic families that he regularly exhibited at the annual Salons. In this painting from 1872, Merle tried his hand at a loosely mythological scene of a languid young woman in the guise of Fall. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe bought the melancholic picture from the New York branch of the art gallery Goupil & Co. on February 21, 1873, while still in mourning for her father. A critic who saw the work in Wolfe’s home remarked, "Here, under russet foliage, a ripe beauty passes…. Nearby, disguised so much in shadow as to be almost invisible, little Love is running away; for this bereavement of affection is the plague of life’s Autumn, as love’s importunity is the plague of its Spring."
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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): Hugues.Merle.1872
?[Goupil & Cie, Paris, 1872; stock no. 6850, purchased on July 25 and sold on October 15, for Fr 18,000, to Knoedler]; [Knoedler, New York, until 1873; sold on February 21, 1873, for $6,750 to Wolfe]; Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, New York (1873–d. 1887)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Taste of the Seventies," April 2–September 10, 1946, no. 142 (as "Falling Leaves").
Hempstead, N.Y. Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University. "Art Pompier: Anti-Impressionism, 19th Century French Salon Painting," October 22–December 15, 1974, no. 74.
New York. Knoedler & Company. "The Rise of the Art World in America: Knoedler at 150," December 5, 1996–January 12, 1997, unnumbered cat. (ill. p. 18).
Edward Strahan [Earl Shinn], ed. The Art Treasures of America. Philadelphia, [1880], vol. 1, pp. 131, 134; vol. 2, ill. after p. 126, calls it "Autumn" in the text and caption and "Autumn of Womanhood" in the list of works; suggests that it is a pendant to a painting of "Spring".
Cicerone. "Private Galleries: Collection of Miss Catharine L. Wolfe." Art Amateur 2 (March 1880), p. 76, calls it an embodiment of "Spring".
Walter Rowlands. "The Miss Wolfe Collection." Art Journal, n.s., (January 1889), p. 13, as "Falling Leaves".
John Denison Champlin Jr. and Charles C. Perkins, ed. Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings. New York, 1892, vol. 3, p. 248, as "Autumn of Womanhood" in the collection of Miss. C. L. Wolfe.
"The Catherine [sic] Wolfe Collection of Paintings." National Magazine (July–August 1893), p. 180.
Catalogue of the Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1898, p. 152, no. 497, states that it was purchased by Miss Wolfe's father (see Sterling and Salinger 1966, Rabinow 1998).
Harry B. Wehle. "Seventy-Five Years Ago." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (April 1946), p. 202.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 67.
Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 2, XIX Century. New York, 1966, p. 179, ill., state that John David Wolfe bought this picture from the artist in 1872 [see Ref. Rabinow 1998]; note the influence of Correggio in the putto.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 433, ill.
Rebecca A. Rabinow. "Catharine Lorillard Wolfe: The First Woman Benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum." Apollo 147 (March 1998), pp. 50, 54 n. 11, fig. 2, notes that Wolfe purchased this painting at Goupil & Co., New York, on February 21, 1873 for $6,750, while still in mourning for her father [see Ex-Colls].
Leanne M. Zalewski. The New York Market for French Art in the Gilded Age, 1867–1893. New York, 2023, pp. 83, 120, as "Autumn" and Falling Leaves, Allegory of Autumn".
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