Emmanuelle Pellet - La confiture au cochon

Emmanuelle Pellet - Pig Jam
Acrylic painting on cardboard
Height: 28 cm, Width: 20.6 cm
Unique piece, hand-painted, signed and numbered
The work was published in a youth album, Le miroir de tes rêves, of which it is the cover, as well as two interior pages. The album will be included with the shipment of the artwork.

About the work:

Seated confidently in front of a window opening onto a desolate industrial landscape, a hybrid figure—half woman, half pig—poses in the tradition of the classical portrait. The painting is a homage to a famous portrait by Baron Gérard. The composition, the deep blue draperies of the puffed-sleeve dress, the tied fabric belt, the armrest and the V-shaped opening against a distant landscape all directly reference the iconography of grand historical painting.

But the setting shifts into anachronism: behind her, a factory chimney exhales smoke in stylized swirls, evoking a futuristic industrial complex. On the table to her right, a labeled jar reinforces the tension between the pictorial past and the incongruent present. The porcine face, treated with almost photographic realism — visible whiskers, a golden attentive gaze, a gleaming snout — contrasts with the gentleness of the smile and the dignity of the posture, creating a effect that is both comic and unsettling.

The work sits in the vein of pop surrealism (lowbrow art), which relishes subverting the codes of classical art history by inserting animal or fantastical figures. By substituting a pig’s head for the face of a countess, the artist playfully questions notions of portrait, social status and representation — the noble pose and refined attire contrasting with the animality of the face. The industrial background adds a satirical dimension, suggesting a veiled critique of consumer society or the food industry, without ever becoming heavy: the tone remains playful and benevolent.

The piece plays on human-animal hybridization, a device dear to lowbrow art and its mentors (Mark Ryden, Marion Peck). The meticulous rendering of skin tones, textures (fur, fabric) testifies to a classical technical mastery serving a vividly dreamlike and offbeat imagination.

A strong work for a collection oriented toward narrative art and contemporary surrealism, this piece will allure with its singular graphic style, its rich symbolism and its highly refined execution. Ideal for an exhibition format, it asserts itself as a characterful piece, well suited to spark conversation in a gallery or a private home.

About the artist:

Art historian by training, Emmanuelle Pellet studied at the École du Louvre and then at the Sorbonne, before passing the Agrégation in Visual Arts (3rd prize). After several years of teaching, she joined the Louvre Museum as head of educational outreach.
Her background today informs a personal body of work where painting technique dialogue with a deep culture of images and art history. Her creations have been shown in galleries in Paris, London, Singapore and Mauritius, and have been the subject of numerous publications. They are now part of private collections in Europe, North America, Asia and the Indian Ocean.
Through each of her works, Emmanuelle Pellet seeks to create an intimate encounter with the viewer: an emotion that endures long after the first glance.