Anne-Geneviève Greuze

A replica of the JB Greuze s last self-portrait, by his daughter Anne-Geneviève

1805

Provenance : Arnold S. Kirkeby (1901-1962) Donated by Arnold S. Kirkeby to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1955, where it remained until its sale at Sotheby's, New York on January 10, 1991, lot 82. Christie's, London, July 7, 2010, lot 186, where it was purchased after the sale by the executors of the will of the late Edmund de Rothschild (1916-2009) for display at Exbury House The Trustees of Exbury House Literature : R. Brown, Bulletin of the Art Division, Los Angeles County Museum, VIII, 1957, pp.8-9, no. 4; S. Schaefer and P. Husco, European Paintings and Sculpture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, 1987), p. 53 (illustrated and dated c. 1735) This sumptuous ceremonial portrait, executed around 1725-1730, depicts Monsieur Aubert, the French General Comptroller of Bridges and Roadways, as we learn from a letter on the desk beside our model. The virtuoso treatment of the fabrics, the authoritative yet confident pose, the vigorous treatment of the two hands, are representative of Largillière's talent, here at the peak of his art as portraitist. The portrait also has a rather extraordinary provenance: donated by Arnold S. Kirkeby, an American hotel magnate and real estate developer, it was exhibited during almost forty years in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, before being acquired in 2010 by the executors of Edmund de Rothschild's will to adorn his former home Exbury House (Hampshire), where it remained until its sale in 2022. 1. Nicolas de Largillière, a great European portraitist Nicolas de Largillière (or Largillierre), one of Europe's premier painters of portraits, history paintings, and still lifes during the late seventeenth century and the first four decades of the eighteenth, was born in Paris in 1656. He was the son of a hatmaker and merchant who moved with his family to Antwerp in 1659. As a boy of nine, he traveled for the first time to London in the company of an associate of his father. After returning to Antwerp more than a year later, his artistic gifts were recognized and his father apprenticed him to Antoni Goubau (1616-1698), a painter genre scenes and landscapes. Something of a prodigy, he was admitted to the painters' Guild of Saint Luke when he was only seventeen. In 1675 he made a second trip to London, where he was employed at Windsor Castle and worked as a restorer under the direction of Italian painter and decorator Antonio Verrio (c. 1639-1707), who brought him to the attention of King Charles II (r. 1660-1685). At this time Largillière painted several still life paintings in the manner of the Dutch and Flemish masters. Thereafter he practiced this branch of painting with consummate skill, a talent that allowed him to make brilliant use of flowers, fruit, and animals in some of his most ambitious portraits and contemporary history pictures. In 1679 Largillière settled in Paris, where he specialized in baroque portraiture in the grand manner of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), and Peter Lely (1618-1680). The Flemish battle painter Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631 or 1632-1690) introduced him to Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) who, as First Painter to King Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) and director of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, was the predominant figure in France's official art establishment. Upon his acceptance as a candidate for admission to the Académie, he agreed to execute as his diploma picture a large portrait of Le Brun (completed 1686, Paris, Musée du Louvre, eight photo in the gallery) seated in his studio surrounded by the accoutrements of his art and an oil study for the ceiling of Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. In 1686, Largillière made a final trip to England, where he painted portraits of the newly crowned king, James II (r. 1685-1688) (Greenwich, National Maritime Museum) and his consort Mary of Modena...

We would like to thank Juliette Parmentier-Courreau of the Custodia Foundation for her welcome and support during the consultation of Glomy’s Journal des Ouvrages. This spectacularly large "feuille de desseins ajustés" commissioned by François Boucher from Jean-Baptiste Glomy is emblematic of the painter's art and mastery of rocaille. It is also fully representative of the taste of this period in the field of decorative arts. The largest of these three drawings, placed at the bottom of the composition, is particularly interesting: dating from around 1756, it constitutes a modello (apparently unpublished) for the frontispiece of the "Catalogue des tableaux de Monsieur de Julienne"), preserved in the Morgan Library in New York. 1. François Boucher, the master of French rocaille The extraordinary career of Francois Boucher was unmatched by his contemporaries in versatility, consistency and output. For many, particularly the writers and collectors who led the revival of interest in the French rococo during the last century, his sensuous beauties and plump cupids represent the French eighteenth century at its most typical. His facility with the brush, even when betraying the occasional superficiality of his art, enabled him to master every aspect of painting – history and mythology, portraiture, landscape, ordinary life and, as part of larger compositions, even still life. He had been trained as an engraver, and the skills of a draftsman, which he imbued in the studio of Jean-Francois Cars (1661 – 1738), stood him in good stead throughout his career; his delightful drawings are one of the most sought-after aspects of his oeuvre. As a student of Francois Lemoyne (1688 - 1737), he mastered the art of composition. The four years he spent in Italy, from 1727-1731, educated him in the works of the masters, classics and history, that his modest upbringing had denied him. On his return to Paris in 1734, he gained full membership of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with his splendid Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Although, throughout his career, he occasionally painted subjects taken from the Bible, and would always have considered himself first as a history painter, his own repertoire of heroines, seductresses, flirtatious peasant girls and erotic beauties was better suited to a lighter, more decorative subject matter. His mastery of technique and composition enabled him to move from large scale tapestry...

French School 18th Century Portrait of a gentleman holding his hat Oil on paper transferred on wood panel 34 x 27 cm Not signed which is normal for this type of artwork In a beautifu...

Louis-Gabriel BLANCHET (Versailles, 1701 – Rome, 1772) Presumed self-portrait of the artist Oil on canvas H. 73 cm; W. 60 cm Circa 1730 Originally presented in a Restoration period frame with a "Mignard" cartouche, this beautiful painting initially appeared to us as a work from northern Italy. However, it exuded a rather French form of refinement, suggesting that its artist may have assimilated a dual influence from both sides of the Alps. We thank our colleague and friend Philippe Mendès for spontaneously and judiciously "bringing out" the name of Louis-Gabriel Blanchet, a Romanized French portraitist, whose spirit and stylistic characteristics we clearly recognize here. Blanchet's "French" years, before his final departure for Rome in 1728, following his winning of the second Grand Prix for painting after Subleyras in 1727, are extremely poorly documented. His father, Gabriel, was valet to Blouin, himself Louis XIV's first valet at the time. According to Thierry Lefrançois, Blanchet was one of the few students of Nicolas Bertin (1667-1736), whose studio he is said to have joined in the early 1720s. At a baptism on March 24, 1724, where he was godfather, he is mentioned as a painter in the picture store of the Duke of Antin, the director of buildings between 1708 and 1736. At this time, he was probably already married to Jeanne Quément, with whom he had a daughter also named Jeanne, who would marry Nicolas Aviet, the son of a valet in the queen's wardrobe, in Versailles in 1738. When Blanchet arrived in Rome in October 1728, he was accompanied by Subleyras, Trémolières, and Slodtz. He enjoyed the goodwill of Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France, which had been based at the Palazzo Mancini since 1725, even though the latter was not always kind to our resident. From 1732, he was under the protection of the Duke of Saint-Aignan when he took up his post as ambassador to Rome. Along with Slodtz and Subleyras, they formed a trio of friends, joined by Joseph Vernet shortly after his arrival in Rome in 1734. Slodtz and Blanchet, on the occasion of Subleyras's marriage in 1739, were there to attest that their friend was not bound by any marital commitment, and Blanchet was a witness at Vernet's wedding in 1745. It is most likely from these early years in Rome that our portrait of the artist dates, the expression and turn of his face irresistibly reminiscent of a self-portrait. The still relatively youthful features may correspond to Blanchet's thirty-something years, and the fluffy wig was still fashionable at this time. The painting fits well with the depiction of a young painter wanting to display both the beginnings of success and a certain simplicity or restraint. A slight smile expresses a form of assurance in this man with a gentle, sincere gaze and a face radiating a keen sense of wit. We find here the air of intimacy present in almost all of Blanchet's portraits, even those from the 1750s and 1760s, as well as an almost complicity with the viewer. The spirit of the painting is quite close to that of the presumed portrait of Bouchardon (painted around 1730) and the portrait of Pannini, painted in 1736, but it possesses a more natural quality, notably thanks to the absence of decorum. Our work exhibits the characteristics of Blanchet's paintings: elegance, luminosity (especially in the whites), vibrant and refined colors (here, the harmony of the garnet of the garment and the slate blue of the background, whose uniformity is tempered by a very sketched landscape and a grove of greenery), light complexions, rather rosy cheekbones, often full lips, and rather tight framing. According to the Academy's rules, Blanchet's stay should have ended in the spring of 1732, but, for reasons unknown, he remained in the Eternal City until his death, as did his friend Subleyras, with whom he shared accommodation until the late 1730s. The latter regularly called upon him to collaborate on his paintings, such as The Meal at Simon's. Through Saint-Aignan's intervention, Blanchet was employed in the late 1730s by the Stuart princely family, then exiled in Italy. He notably produced copies (now lost) after Liotard of the portraits of Charles Edward and Henry Benedict, the sons of James III Stuart. The latter also commissioned three other portraits (now in the National Portrait Gallery in London), whose more formal character contrasts with the intimate spirit of Blanchet's portraits. Blanchet frequented English painters, such as the landscape painter Richard Wilson, and studied with the Scottish portraitist Katherine Read...