Léon HORSIN DEON (French School, XIXth century) :

Son of the painter Simon Horsin Déon, pupil of Cornu, Cabanel and Léon Cogniet, Léon Horsin Déon started his artistic career at the Salon de Paris in 1873.

The subject chosen here, still life with weapons and armours, dates back to the XVIIth century, and was very much liked during the Thirty Years War. In the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, there is an oil on board painted by Willem de Poorter, pupil of Rembrandt. It figures a type of armour worn by the nobals during the war (illustrated in: Schneider, Norbert, Les Natures mortes, Réalité et symbolique des choses, Köln, Taschen, 1991, p. 182).

Antoine Vollon (1833-1900) worked on the same subject when he made a painting for the French State in 1868 (nowadays in the Musée d'Orsay). The armours used as a model are at present in the Wallace Collection. This painting, of large dimensions, is entitled "Curiosités".