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CHARLES CHAPLIN (French, 1825-1891) La fille du peintre (or Sweet Innocence), 1881 Oil on canvas 25-3/4 x 18 inches (65.4 x 45.7 cm) Signed and dated lower left: Ch. Chaplin / 1881 PROVENANCE: Colin Stodgell Fine Art, England; Collection of Marie Therese Pierre Burdin; Christie's, New York, October 30, 2002, lot 187. Paris' most popular mid-19th century fashion painter, as well as Emperor Napoleon's favorite court painter during the 1860s, Charles Chaplin specialized in elegant portraits of women and children in the tradition of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. He trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under Michel Martin Drolling and in 1847 began regularly exhibiting at the Paris Salons and at the Royal Academy in London. Some of Chaplin's portraits, especially of women wearing diaphanous clothing, were deemed too erotic for the time; in fact, the Salon jury of 1859 rejected his Aurora as scandalous. By contrast, La fille du peintre, presents a wholly decorous vision of his young daughter in her ruffled dress, at the same time underscoring his hallmark palette of whites, silvery greys, and pinks. Chaplin's tender portrayal of his daughter and of other children no doubt influenced his most famous American pupil, Mary Cassatt, who studied in his atelier in 1866. The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Louvre Museum, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bowes Museum, County Durham, United Kingdom, Indianapolis Musem of Art, and Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore are among the prestigious museums housing paintings by Chaplin.