I have owned this painting for a long time.
Not long ago, I started looking for who might have painted it.
The theme is Commedia del Arte, the two figures under observation, and perhaps threat, from the officer on the right. It is signed Joron. There is no artist by that name. I discovered that there is Jeanron, an artist from the early to mid 19th Century, who died in 1877. He had fallen out of favor, once having been, in 1848, the head of museums in France and the first Director of the Louvre in particular, appointed under the Revolution of 1848. He was a Jacobin from the last days of the Napoleonic era. He was a good friend of Daumier, also a republican, and promoted his work throughout Jeanron's life.
Most of his work is not satirical, whereas Daumier used these type of figures, especially in his paintings, and in some of his graphic work.
It is dated 1873, which would have been several years before Jeanron died. Whoever signed Joron either knew better, or was ppartially concealing his identity. Jeanron himself may have had a motive to use a partial pseudonym, given the repressive situation in Paris in 1873, with the Germans still in occupation I believe. There is also the letter J next to Joron. It is in what I take to be Jeanron's hand based on comparison with from signatures on other work.
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