Figures Seated around a Table

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About the Item

Provenance: Elsie de Woolfe, Lady Mendl, Paris; by whom given in 1950 to: Arlene Dahl, New York (until 2021) This delightful sheet is a newly rediscovered work by the eighteenth-century French painter and draughtsman Jean Jacques Louis Durameau. Durameau belonged to the generation of artists after Jean-Baptiste Pierre, Charles-André van Loo, and Charles-Joseph Natoire—each of whom may be said to have contributed to his artistic education. Durameau had a successful career in Paris, exhibiting regularly at the Salon from 1767 to 1789 and rising to such important positions as painter to the Cabinet du Roi (1778) and Garde des Tableaux du Roi (1784). He is best remembered as a religious and history painter, particularly for his ceilings. However, in his early career, Durameau was focused on genre scenes and representations of everyday life, including card games, family gatherings, and interior settings. Few drawings of this kind by the artist have survived, making this a particularly important addition to Durameau’s known graphic oeuvre. In this drawing, a gentleman is depicted seated a table in the company of his family. The figures are elegantly dressed, particularly the father, who sits in a relaxed position dressed in a frock coat. He holds a sheet of paper in his hand—likely a drawing, due to its large size—and is examining it closely while his son peers over his shoulder. This opens the possibility that the father could be studying one of his son’s drawings, or that he is a collector inspecting a drawing that is being offered to him for sale. The figure with a wide-brimmed hat standing in the background holds a portfolio under his arm; he may be an artist, dealer, or quite possibly the drawing master of the boy. Humorously, Durameau contrasts the attentiveness of the father and older son to the sheet at left with the younger boy at right, who turns away from his mother’s lesson and the book in his hand to play with a small dog, who has jumped up on the chair at right. The artist also juxtaposes the contemplative but cheerful air of the gentleman with the serious expression of his wife, who is undoubtedly annoyed by the young boy’s lack of concentration. Completing the composition is another small dog in the foreground, depicted with its swirling tail wagging in the air. Durameau’s rapid execution of this drawing is entirely consistent with his practice—he often put his ideas to paper with a few quick and incisive strokes. The figures are rendered with brief lines and dots of ink that make up the eyes, noses, and mouths. By applying light washes, Durameau also created striking contrasts of light and dark that give the composition a sense of relief. The gentleman in particular is masterfully rendered with great attention paid to his physiognomy and attire. The various tones of wash and the thicknesses of the lines used in the construction of this figure contrasts sharply with the near absence of wash applied to the wife, who appears as if bathed in a white light. Typical of the artist is the use of dark wash in the lower half of the sheet, against which the lines of the Louis XVI furniture stand out. Durameau’s use of multiple parallel lines to define the legs of the table and chairs is consistent with his earliest genre scenes from the end of his Roman period. The drawing can be compared with his Madame Le Comte Preparing her Adornments and Country Inn Scene (Figs. 1-2). In its conception and graphic style, it also anticipates Durameau’s well-known Card Game in the Louvre (Fig. 3). Durameau presents in this drawing a fleeting snapshot of private life in eighteenth-century France, and possibly one that he himself witnessed and recorded with his pen. He was both a professor at the Académie Royal and taught at the drawing academy sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Chabot in their home, the Hôtel de la Rochefoucault, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It remains a possibility that this drawing depicts the Chabot family, or that the scene is based on Durameau’s experience in their home or that of one of the many notable contemporaries that collected his drawings, such as Pierre-Jean Mariette, Louis-François Trouard, or Pierre-Adrien Pâris. But beyond this, the sheet captures the importance of drawing to the arts precisely at a moment when connoisseurs were becoming increasingly interested in assembling great collections of drawings. We are grateful to Dr. Anne Leclair, independent art historian and author of the catalogue raisonné on Louis Jean Jacques Durameau, for confirming Durameau’s authorship of this drawing (written communication, 5 February 2021). She dates it from around 1765 after his return from Rome and has written of the drawing: “There are indisputable graphic elements which evoke the artist, not only in the atmosphere of a reading scene with family and friends, but also in the treatment of lines and faces… Following his return to Paris, Durameau was attracted to the genre of stage scenes—influenced by his master Jean-Baptiste Pierre—but most drawings of this kind are lost… This is a beautiful leaf, à la Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, and is quite remarkable for the swiftness of the pen and the accents of black wash that enhance the light of the scene.” Dr. Leclair plans to include the present work in her forthcoming article discussing drawings by Durameau that have come to light since the publication of her catalogue raisonnée.

Creator:
Louis Jean Jacques Durameau (1733 - 1796, French)
Creation Year:
ca. 1765
Dimensions:
Height: 7 in (17.78 cm)Width: 6.13 in (15.58 cm)
Medium:
Paper,Ink,Pen
Movement & Style:
Old Masters
Period:
1760-1769
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1029636102

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