A Year After the Wedding (Un an après le marriage)

Achille Deveria was one of the most popular illustrators of his day, producing designs for widely-distributed lithographs devoted to sentimental, erotic, and amusing scenes, in contrast to his brother Eugene's ambitious history paintings. In keeping with Deveria's choice of lighthearted and moralizing themes, this sheet and its pendant (1997.19) depict a young woman before and after she is wed. The day before the wedding, she sits alongside her harp, her dog at her feet, in a luxurious interior as she looks in the mirror while adding a necklace to her finery. She is lively with anticipation of seeing her betrothed. A year after her wedding, however, the scene is quite different: she sits by a glowing lamp alongside a child sleeping in a bassinet, with her head resting pensively against her hand as she awaits the return of her spouse. These finished wash drawings were preparatory for a pair of 1828 lithographs printed and published in Paris by Charles Motte.