Portrait of Julien Prieur as a hunter - Circle of Jean-Baptiste Oudry 1686-1755

1730

In this masterly painting, Francesco de Mura presents the meeting of Herminia and the shepherds, a famous episode taken from the seventh canto of Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered...

These two royal portraits are a major historical testimony to the stay of the Comte d'Artois (the future Charles X) and his family in Edinburgh in 1796-1797. Given by the sitters to Lord Adam Gordon, the Governor of Edinburgh, and kept by family descent to this day, these two portraits provide us with a vivid and spontaneous image of the Duc d’Angoulême and his brother the Duc de Berry. Danloux, who had emigrated to London a few years before, demonstrate his full assimilation of the art of British portrait painters in the brilliant execution of these portraits. 1. Henri-Pierre Danloux, a portraitist in the revolutionary turmoil Born in Paris in 1753, Henri-Pierre Danloux was first a pupil of the painter Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié (1735 - 1784) and then, in 1773, of Joseph-Marie Vien (1716 - 1809), whom he followed to Rome when, at the end of 1775, Vien became Director of the Académie de France. In Rome he became friends with the painter Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825). Returning to France around 1782, he settled in Lyon for a few years before returning to Paris in 1785. One of his first portraits was commissioned by the Baroness d'Etigny, the widow of the former Intendant of the Provinces of Gascony, Bearn and Navarre Antoine Mégret d'Etigny (1719 – 1767). He then became close to his two sons, Mégret de Sérilly and Mégret d'Etigny, who in turn became his patrons. In 1787, this close relationship with the d'Etigny family was further strengthened by his marriage to Antoinette de Saint-Redan, a relative of Madame d'Etigny. After his marriage, he left for Rome and did not return to France until 1789. It was during the winter of 1790-1791 that he painted one of his masterpieces, the portrait of Baron de Besenval. Set in a twilight atmosphere, this portrait of an aristocrat who knows that his death is imminent symbolizes the disappearance of an erudite and refined society which would be swept away by the French Revolution. The Jacobin excesses led Danloux to emigrate to England in 1792; many members of his family-in-law who remained in France were guillotined on 10 May 1794. Danloux enjoyed great success as a portrait painter in England before returning to France in 1801. During his stay in England, Danloux was deeply under the influence of English portraitists: his colors became warmer (as shown by the portrait of the Duc d'Angoulême that we are presenting), and his execution broader. 2. Description of the two portraits and biographical details of the sitters The Duc d'Angoulême (1775-1844) was the eldest son of the Comte d'Artois, the younger brother of King Louis XVI (the future King Charles X), and his wife Marie-Thérèse of Savoie. He is shown here, in the freshness of his youth, wearing the uniform of colonel-general of the "Angoulême-Dragons" regiment. He is wearing the blue cordon of the Order of the Holy Spirit, which was awarded to him in 1787, and two decorations: the Cross of Saint-Louis and the Maltese Cross, as he was also Grand Prior of the Order of Malta. Born on 16 August 1775 in Versailles, Louis-Antoine d'Artois followed his parents into emigration on 16 July 1789. In 1792, he joined the émigrés’ army led by the Prince de Condé. After his stay in Edinburgh (which will be further discussed), he went to the court of the future King Louis XVIII, who was in exile at the time, and in 1799 married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France, the daughter of Louis XVI and the sole survivor of the royal family. The couple had no descendants. He became Dauphin of France in 1824, upon the accession to the throne of his father but played only a minor political role, preferring his military position as Grand Admiral. Enlisted in Spain on the side of Ferdinand VII, he returned home crowned with glory after his victory at Trocadero in 1823. He reigned for a very short time at the abdication of Charles X in 1830, before relinquishing his rights in favor of his nephew Henri d'Artois, the Duc de Bordeaux. He then followed his father into exile and died on 3 June 1844 in Gorizia (now in Italy). His younger brother, the Duc de Berry, is shown in the uniform of the noble cavalry of the émigrés’ Army. He is wearing the blue cordon of the Order of the Holy Spirit, awarded to him in May 1789, and the Cross of Saint-Louis (partly hidden by his blue cordon). Born on 24 January 1778 in Versailles, Charles-Ferdinand d'Artois also followed his parents into emigration and joined the émigrés’ army in 1792. After his stay in Edinburgh, he remained in Great Britain, where he had an affair with Amy Brown...

This painting is typical of the art of Jan Weenix, one of the best still life and hunting painters of the Dutch Golden Age. In a cleverly disordered manner, he depicts ten studies of dogs (mainly spaniels and greyhounds) and the sumptuous study of a stole. These studies were probably intended to be used as a source of inspiration and adapted in the painter's compositions, as we will see in a close examination of some of his paintings. 1. Jan Weenix, a prolific still life painter Jan Weenix was born into a family of artists: his father Jan Baptist Weenix (1621 - 1659) was also a landscape and still life painter and his mother Josyntgen d'Hondecoeter was the daughter of the animal painter Gillis d'Hondecoeter (1575 - 1638). His father trained him together with his cousin Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636 - 1695). In 1664 Jan Weenix became a member of the St. Luke's Guild in Utrecht, to which he belonged until 1668. In 1679 he married Pieternella Backer with whom he had 13 children. His compositions, often related to hunting (still lifes, portraits of hunters) were very successful, ensuring him a certain financial ease. Jan Weenix also painted large-scale decorations: while staying in Düsseldorf with the Prince-Elector of the Palatinate between 1702 and 1712, he executed twelve gigantic compositions combining landscapes, hunting scenes and still life for the Bensberg hunting lodge. 2. Description of the artwork The painting displays a great apparent disorder that hides a rigorous organisation in four quarters. It presents ten studies of hunting dogs and one study of a stole. The studies of the stole and of two of the dogs (the greyhound in the lower right and the spaniel in the upper right quarter) are quite elaborate, whereas those of the other dogs are sketchier. As an example, the dog in the upper right corner is only partially painted. The dogs' coats, of different colours - brown, sandy, grey or black - stand out against the warm brown background and are illuminated by the shine of their white hair. This white colour, probably executed with ceruse white, illuminates the study of a stole which stands out in the lower left-hand corner while the red colour of its lining warms up the composition. The purpose of this stole is enigmatic: we think it is probably a neckband, but it could also be the back of the turban of an oriental character. To the right of this stole is the outline of a long animal leg, perhaps a horse leg. Similar studies are rare in the work of Jan Weenix, but the Rijksmuseum recently acquired the study of a seated monkey. This study, executed in the same brown chromatic range, is much more accomplished. It has been reused with minimal change in many compositions. It is likely that Jan Weenix had less frequently a monkey at his disposal, and that he therefore depicted it in great details, whereas he could probably easily find dogs as models. Note the characteristic white dot in the corner of each pupil that brings them to life! 3. Related artworks We have tried to relate the various dogs in this study to the countless dogs that appear in the paintings of Jan Weenix, as listed in the catalogue 'Father and Son - Weenix' compiled by Anke van Wagenberg- Ter Hoeven in 2018. A first example is the painting entitled "The Prodigal Son on the Steps of a Palace" (catalogue number 7 - 8th photo in the gallery). In the lower left-hand corner of the composition, a spaniel is barking at a peacock perched on a stone. This spaniel, which is depicted in a similar manner in the "Portrait of a Young Man with a Falcon" in the Bremen Kunsthalle (catalogue number 76), is reminiscent of the spaniel in the upper left-hand quarter of our study (although the latter is slenderer and the direction of its head differs). We also find, in a slightly different pose, the seated greyhound that is at the top of our painting in the composition representing "A Swan, a Stag, a Hare and Birds presented by two hunting Valets" (catalogue number 130 - last photo in the gallery). The sketch of this greyhound in our study is unfinished: the painter only painted the grey undercoat and the white parts of the coat, without completing the sandy coat which appears in the final painting. We can see from these various examples that our study was probably more a repertoire of forms than a model for a specific composition. The painter probably used it for inspiration before adapting each dog study...

This replica of the last self-portrait of Jean-Baptiste Greuze painted in 1804, executed by his daughter Anna at her father's side and recently rediscovered, provides us with a poignant image of the great artist, represented with panache despite the disillusions of life. 1. Jean-Baptiste Greuze Jean-Baptiste Greuze was the sixth child of a roofer from Tournus and retained a certain rusticity in his behaviour from his provincial childhood, beyond his taste for describing picturesque scenes of the countryside. He initially started training with a little-known painter from Lyon, Charles Grandon, before his genius was recognised in Paris where he became a full-time student of the Académie (of Painting) in 1755. He exhibited his work for the first time at the Salon during the summer of 1755, before leaving on a trip to Italy in the company of Louis Gougenot, abbot of Chezal-Benoît. Upon his return to Paris, Greuze became a prolific painter, participating widely in the Salons held between 1759 and 1765, to which he sent no less than 63 paintings: numerous genre scenes (The Marriage Contract, The Beloved Mother), but also portraits of his family circle, of courtiers and art lovers, or of his colleagues. The Academy closed the doors of the Salons to him in 1767 for not having produced his reception piece within six months of his reception, as was the tradition. He worked actively on this painting (Emperor Severus rebukes Caracalla, his son, for trying to assassinate him ) until the summer of 1769, tackling historical and mythological subjects for the first time. Once this was completed, he was then fully admitted to the Academy, but as a genre painter, and not as an historical painter, which had been one of the greatest humiliations of his life. Greuze then refused any participation in events organised by the Academy or its successor, the Academy of Fine Arts until 1800. Abandoning history painting, he gave a new twist to genre scenes, bringing them closer to history painting, as in this pair of canvases which constitutes some of his masterpieces: The Paternal Curse: The Ungrateful Son and The Paternal Curse: The Punished Son . Married in 1759 to Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, the daughter of a Parisian bookseller, his marriage was unhappy and his wife probably frequently unfaithful. The institution of divorce enabled him to record their separation in 1793, keeping his two daughters Anna-Geneviève, born in April 1762, and Louise-Gabrielle, born in May 1764, with him. Little is known about his daughter Anna except that she was herself a painter and lived with her father until his death. It is likely that most of the paintings she produced up to that date were attributed to her father, whose technique she shared to a great extent, making it extremely difficult to establish an autonomous corpus of her paintings. Greuze died in his studio at the Louvre on March 21st 1805. The attention paid to the expressivity of his characters and the emotional charge they convey enabled Jean-Baptiste Greuze to enjoy immense popularity with the eighteenth-century public, and they still constitute Greuze's true modernity. As the artist said, "I dipped my brush in my heart". Greuze was also an exceptional draughtsman and a portraitist of immense talent and exceptional longevity who painted both the Dauphin (the son of Louis XV and father to Louis XVI) and the young Napoleon Bonaparte. 2. Greuze's self-portraits Greuze was very much influenced by Dutch paintings during all his life. While the source of his inspiration for genre scenes can be found in Gerard Dou...

This recently rediscovered portrait of Santi di Tito depicts a Florentine senator, with a letter in his hand indicating that the painting was executed in 1574 when the sitter was 66 years old. On the basis of these clues, it is tempting to view it as a portrait of Bartolomeo Panciatichi, who was painted some thirty years before by Bronzino (1503 - 1572). While the treatment of the hands recalls the Florentine tradition of Mannerist portraits, the comparison with Bronzino's portrait illustrates Santi di Tito's search for greater realism, despite the stereotyped composition. 1. Santi di Tito, Counter-Reformation painter and portraitist Santi di Tito was the great painter of the Florentine Counter-Reformation. He proposed a new artistic language that broke away from Mannerism. Little is known about his training in Florence (perhaps alongside Bronzino or Baccio Bandinelli), but this period of training enabled him to join the Company of Saint Luke, the guild of Florentine painters, in 1554. Between 1560 and 1564, Santi di Tito spent time in Rome, where he frequented the workshop of Taddeo Zuccari. This stay had a fundamental influence on his work, thanks to the discovery of the late work of Raphael, but also his encounters with the painters Francesco Salviati and Federico Barocci. Around 1565, Santi di Tito returned to Florence, where he remained until the end of his life, dividing his talents between the creation of important religious paintings and countless portraits. He became one of the city's leading painters, distinguishing himself, in particular, in the creation of large religious compositions in which the spirit of the Counter-Reformation was reflected. In 1568, Santi di Tito became a member of the Confraternity of Saint Thomas Aquinas...

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 Ja...

A beautiful mid 18th century French Old Master oil on canvas depicting a horse and well dressed rider in a clearing. Excellent quality and condition work, indistinctly inscribed on t...

Thomas Spencer was a leading sporting and equestrian artist of the period of John Wootton and James Seymour; his art shows a considerable to debt to tha...

English 19th century portrait of a White / Grey hunter in a stable. Charles Towne was born in Wigan in 1763. He was trained as a coach painter, and by ...

This stunning Old Master 17th century oil portrait painting is attributed to Francesco Fieravino, an artist famous in his day for still lifes and carpets. This painting which dates t...

A copy of the self portrait of William Hogarth with his dog, called Trump. A fantastic quality image possibly from Hogarth's original school of art. This piece is titled, dated and monogrammed. It is in an antique, period Louis XIV style frame. The painting measures 36 x 28" (92 x 72cm) Outside Frame Size: 45 x 37" (104 x 94cm) Hogarth began this self-portrait in the mid-1730s. Initially Hogarth painted himself wearing a formal coat...

The Resting Place Dutch School, mid 17th century oil painting on board, unframed canvas: 7 x 9 inches provenance: private collection condition: very good and sound condition