A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry

1850–53 · Fabricated black and white chalk, squared with fabricated black chalk, on blue laid paper · Drawings and Prints

With a sympathetic gaze, this figure extends a hand offering a loaf of bread, an embodiment of feeding the hungry, one of the seven works of mercy that Biennourry was commissioned to paint with fellow Prix de Rome winner Eugène Damery (1823–1853) for a chapel in the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. This was the artist’s third major religious commission after successfully completing decorations for the Parisian churches of Saint-Roch and Saint-Séverin. The restoration and redecoration of Saint-Eustache from 1842 to 1860 involved more than twenty academic painters, though many, such as Biennourry, are little known today.

Artist

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry

Date

1850–53

Medium

Fabricated black and white chalk, squared with fabricated black chalk, on blue laid paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Alexander B.V. Johnson and Roberta J.M. Olson, 1998