[Polonaise de Chopin ou Bal à l'hôtel Lambert].

Drawing, brown ink wash over pencil, bluish grey laid paper, watermark "D&C Blauw"; not signed. Stuck by corners.

Good condition.

The Polish musician playing the piano amid a large audience. Sketch similar (in reverse) to a 1859 watercolour preserved in the Poznan National Museum. Around 1840 "the name Hôtel Lambert came to designate a political faction of Polish exiles associated with Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who had purchased the Hôtel Lambert [...] The Hôtel Lambert drew some renowned politicians and artists of the epoch, including [...] Frédéric Chopin [...] George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Eugène Delacroix, and Adam Mickiewicz. In fact, Chopin's "La Polonaise" was composed expressly for the Polish ball held there every year" (Wikipedia). T. Kwiatkowski (Pultusk 1809-Avallon 1891) was a Polish painter; just as many Poles he emigrated to France after the failure of the November 1830 Uprising. He executed several portraits of Chopin, during his life but also after his death in 1849.