Cassanéa De Mondonville, Maximilien-Joseph (Paris, 1749 - Charenton, Saint-Maurice 1809)

The artist was the 20-year-old son of the famous composer and violinist Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (1711-1772), and his wife, the amateur pastellist Anne-Jeanne Boucon (q.v.). They were the subject of pastels by La Tour which belonged to the son in 1782 (Tessier 1926 presumed this was the occasion of their sale, the Salon de La Correspondence, being his view nothing but a commercial venture).

Maximilien-Joseph was a contrôleur des rentes de l’hôtel de ville de Paris. In 1779 he was awarded a pension of 600 livres in consideration of his father’s services; he was then living in the house on the rue des Vieux-Augustins which his grandfather had purchased. The amateur pastellist was also a violinist and oboist and composed six sonatas for violin and bass. Tourneux mentions a pencil drawing of the Castle of Ermenonville, dated 1786.

He was married twice, first (Paris, Saint-Eustache, 1785, where he had been baptised) to a Marie-Rose Gurber (1762-1828) from whom he was divorced 1797; and secondly (Paris, 1800) to a Marie Théodore Keill, by whom he had three children. The dispute over the settlement with his first wife continued until 1806 and required the sale of the house in the rue des Vieux-Augustin’s; Mondonville moved to a small apartment in the rue de Montorgueil. In 1808 Mondonville was confined to the mental asylum at Charenton where he died the following year, while his wife moved to her sisters in a fifth-floor apartment (in the same house in the rue Montorgueil) where his estate inventory was taken. The inventories recorded nine paintings, landscape or genre subjects, but no pastel. He was described in the document as a musician.

He was however the M. de Mondonville to whom Perronneau confided his last wishes in Amsterdam in 1783: that was his cousin, Martin Cassanéa de Mondonville, who had settled in the city by 1779; three children were baptised in the French church there, one in 1783. Martin’s mother and sister travelled to Moscow in 1781.

Text: Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800