Place du Carrousel, Paris

Place du Carrousel, Paris is an oil on panel by the French painter Amédée Julien Marcel-Clément, signed and dated 'MarcelClément/1913' at lower right; it was sold at Christie's London in May 2016.

Marcel-Clément (1873–1946) was born and died in Paris. The son of a jeweller, he studied under Jean-Jacques Henner at the École des Beaux-Arts between 1901 and 1910 and began exhibiting at the Salon in the early 1900s, later showing regularly with the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Indépendants. Although he spent his whole life in the capital, he painted relatively few views of it; his reputation rested on seascapes of the French coast, especially around Dinard, where he had a second home. In 1913 and 1914, the period of this picture, he also exhibited in Britain, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Royal Scottish Academy.

The Place du Carrousel lies at the open end of the Louvre courtyard, between the museum and the Tuileries Garden, on ground occupied until 1883 by the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace; its name recalls an equestrian display staged there for Louis XIV in 1662. In the distance at centre right rises the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built in 1806–08 to commemorate Napoleon's victories. Marcel-Clément gives most of the panel to a tall tree turning gold and a sky of thickly brushed white clouds, and fills the broad, pale square with everyday life: a waiting carriage with red wheels and two white horses, a woman in white walking with a small girl and two dogs, and scattered passers-by near a street lamp.

The panel measures 53.5 by 65 cm. At the Christie's sale of 17 May 2016 (19th Century European Art, lot 85) it carried an estimate of £3,000–5,000.