Louis-Gabriel-Eugène Isabey, 'Grandfather's Birthday', 1866

Although titled Grandfather’s Birthday, an inscription on the wooden support on the reverse of this small oak panel reads Le Nouveau Né (The Newborn), which may be a more appropriate title. We are looking at an intergenerational family group, which includes a mix of ages ranging from a young infant being cradled by a woman to the left of the table to an elderly man supporting a slightly older child on the other side. The age gap is replicated by the dogs (possibly spaniels), which include a young puppy (also on the left of the picture).

The son of the court portrait painter and miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855), under whom he also trained, Louis-Gabriele-Eugène Isabey was a successful painter, lithographer and watercolourist in his own right who painted a diverse range of subjects including historical and genre pictures. This animated scene shows a miniaturist’s eye for detail and was most likely inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings of domestic life. As in Isabey’s The Fish Market, Dieppe, the people wear historical costume that appears to date from the early seventeenth century, rather than contemporary clothes – an instance, perhaps, of a French fascination with the France of earlier times.