La Boudeuse is the modern title given to an oil on canvas painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the late 1710s, La Boudeuse depicts a young couple set amidst a park in the foreground, in a rare example of the two-figure landscape composition which is considered one of the best fêtes galantes in Watteau's later work. However, the picture's authenticity was also a subject of scholarly debate, for it had been engraved by English painter Philippe Mercier, once a follower of Watteau, and was not included in Jean de Jullienne's edition of Watteau's work published in the 1730s.

Since the mid-18th century, La Boudeuse was among collections formed by the British statesman Robert Walpole, and later by his son, the writer Horace Walpole; until the sale of 1842, it was located in Horace Walpole's estate, Strawberry Hill House. Following a number of sales in the middle of the 19th century, the painting came into possession of prominent Russian art collector, Count Pavel Stroganov; after the Revolution of 1917, La Boudeuse was transferred into the Hermitage Museum, where it remains.

Provenance

The painting's known provenance, researched since the 1960s in the West and Russia respectively, establishes that after Watteau's death, La Boudeuse was already in England, owned by London-based dealer Salomon Gautier, a close acquaintance of Roger de Piles; in the 1726 sale catalogue of Gautier's collection, La Boudeuse appears to be the painting under lot 34 described as "a Man and a Woman sitting, Watteau." Some time later, after 1736, La Boudeuse came into possession of Sir Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister; as part of the Walpole collection, the painting probably hung either in the home of the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street or in the Walpoles' country estate at Houghton Hall. Upon Robert Walpole's death in 1745, his collections, except those at Houghton Hall, were put on a sale in London in 1748; La Boudeuse was lot 52 on day two of the sale, when it was bought back by Sir Robert Walpole's son, the writer Horace Walpole, who paid three pounds, three shillings. La Boudeuse soon entered the holdings of Horace' estate, Strawberry Hill House. In Strawberry Hill House, the painting was present in the Tribune (also called the Cabinet), notably depicted in watercolours by John Carter and Edward Edwards; it has also been mentioned in Walpole's A Description of the Villa, having the same description as in the 1726 sale catalogue.

La Boudeuse formed part of the Strawberry Hill collection until 1842, when it has been dispersed in the month-long "Great Sale"; on the 13th day of the sale, a certain Emery, who lived in London at 5 Bury Street, bought La Boudeuse for thirty nine guineas. Not long after, it came into possession of Charles de Morny, the half-brother of the future Emperor Napoleon III. After a decade in the comte de Morny's collection, the painting — now known as La Conversation — was sold at auction for 1,700 francs on 24 May 1852 to the certain Henri Didier, who, in turn, didn't kept the picture for long; it then passed to Charles de Ferrol, a Parisian dealer who similarly had the painting for a brief time and sold it at auction for 2,600 francs on 22 January 1856.

Some time after Ferrol's sale, La Boudeuse belonged to the comte de Morny's agent Jean-Jacques Meffre (1804–1865), from whom it has been bought for 5,000 francs in 1859 by Russian noble Pavel Stroganov; along with other items, La Boudeuse was first presented to the Russian public on an exhibition organised by Stroganov in 1861 at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg. As part of Stroganov's collection, La Boudeuse — described as Scéne champêtre in the collection inventory compiled by Meffre and Gustav Friedrich Waagen — was placed in his mansion in Saint Petersburg at Sergievskaya Street, present in the Green Drawing Room, a reception room at the mansion's upper floor where the collection's most notable items were also held; in an 1875 essay on Stroganov's mansion, the writer Dmitry Grigorovich — a close friend and advisor of Stroganov — refers to La Boudeuse as "a declaration of love in the garden." La Boudeuse was the sole Watteau painting in Pavel Stroganov's collection, and so was in the larger Stroganov family collection.

In his will, Stroganov wished to pass La Boudeuse, among other pieces, to his younger brother Grigory, but the latter died in 1910, before the will could be properly executed; after Pavel Stroganov's death in 1911, his collection at Sergievskaya Street was succeeded by a grandnephew, Prince Georgy Shcherbatov (1896–1976). Some time later, possibly during 1917, it was relocated into the Stroganovs' main residence, the Stroganov Palace at the intersection of the Moika River and Nevsky Prospect. Following the revolution that year, the Stroganov collections were nationalised; the Stroganov Palace was reformed into a state museum, with La Boudeuse forming its part. Following theft attempts in Winter 1919–1920, a number of paintings, including La Boudeuse, have been transferred into the Hermitage Museum out of security concerns. Initially a temporary decision, the transfer turned out to be a permanent one, following the shutdown of the Stroganov Palace as museum in the late 1920s. Since then, La Boudeuse forms part of the Hermitage Museum permanent exhibition; it is on view in Room 284, formerly the second room of military pictures in the Winter Palace.

Dating

In the 1912 album and catalogue, the German historian Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann attributed La Boudeuse to ca. 1716–1718, placing it in relation to two versions of The Embarkation for Cythera. In the 1950s, Jacques Mathey has dated it c. 1715, placing to the same year with The Embarrassing Proposal. Nemilova dated the painting ca. 1718 on stylistic grounds; given its provenance within the Walpoles' collections, Nemilova and other, notably Russian, critics speculated that Watteau might have painted it some time before or during his English trip, usually dated ca. 1719–1720; on that ground, Yuri Zolotov preferred a c. 1720 dating. In a 1968 catalogue raisonné, Ettore Camesasca places La Boudeuse to c. 1715, while not accepting Watteau's authorship; later in 1980, Marianne Roland Michel attributed it to ca. 1715–1716. Rosenberg has attributed the painting to c. 1717, yet found Nemilova's dating quite convincing. Later authors, such as Renaud Temperini and Guillaume Glorieux, attribute the painting to ca. 1715–1717 and c. 1715, respectively.

Related works

Watteau's paintings and drawing

There are two surviving works by Watteau which have been compared to La Boudeuse, The Feast of Love, now in the Alte Meister Gallery, Dresden, and The Pleasures of the Ball, now in the Dulwich Gallery, London. In The Feast of Love, a male figure appears to fully repeat that found on the Hermitage painting, save for his clothes' colour; there is also a similar character in Entretiens amoureux, a presumably lost painting known through a print by Jean-Michel Liotard, the twin brother of prominent pastelist Jean-Étienne Liotard. In The Pleasures of the Ball, a woman is shown wearing a black gown with the long slashed slevees.

The only one drawing by Watteau that has been associated with La Boudeuse is a red chalk study of the man's head wearing a beret (PM 749; RP 332), dated c. 1715, and now located in the Louvre. In Parker and Mathey's catalogue, the drawing was considered to be a preliminary study for both La Boudeuse and The Feast of Love, but Nemilova dismissed that opinion, saying that the Louvre drawing is not related with the Hermitage painting in any way; similarly, National Gallery of Art curator Margaret Grasselli questioned if the drawing could be related to the Dresden painting. Rosenberg, who did not consider the drawing to be "a true preparatory study in the strict sense of the term", only related the drawing with The Feast of Love; in a 1996 catalogue raisonné, he and Louis-Antoine Prat also concluded the drawing to be barely related to the painting, given the sitter's youthful appearance, different from that on the painting. In A Watteau Abecedario, Eidelberg stated that the sheet was trimmed on at least three sides, and presumed that the drawing was part of a larger study which could contain other studies from the same model, so the differences between the present drawing and the painted figure — the beret and feather are at a slightly different angle in the painting, and less of the left cheek is visible — can be explained.

Philippe Mercier's print and attribution debate

La Boudeuse was etched by English painter Philippe Mercier c. 1725. Pierre-Jean Mariette, who knew the print, gives a mention of it in his manuscripts: "Une femme assise dans un jardin ayant derrière elle, un homme qui lui parle, gravé par Pierre [sic] de Mercier." Like others etchings by Mercier after Watteau, La Boudeuse was not featured in the Recueil Jullienne, — though some authors claimed the contrary — possibly out of commercial reasons.

Mercier, whose early art has been influenced by that of Watteau following their acquaintance in the late 1710s, produced his own fêtes galantes based on Watteau's inventions. In the four-volume study of prints after Watteau's paintings published by Émile Dacier and Albert Vuaflart in the 1920s, it has been discovered that some etchings by Mercier, published as they were after Watteau, has actually been produced after Mercier's own inventions. Following this discovery, La Boudeuse, which authenticity was not previously questioned mostly due to its obscurity, was attributed to Mercier by Vuaflart and Jacques Herold, who claimed that Mercier copied figures from another composition by Watteau, Les Agrémens de l'esté.

Vuaflart and Herold's attribution, as well as poor quality of reproductions in Zimmermann's 1912 album, caused a scholarly debate, with some of Watteau scholars — including Robert Rey, Hélène Adhémar, and Ettore Camesasca — having adopted it, while the most of them — including Gilbert W. Barker, Hans Vollmer,^: 193 Charles Sterling, Jacques Mathey, and Inna Nemilova. — stayed at the traditional attribution. Though Eidelberg's analysis of the painting, along with tracing its provenance, also confirmed Watteau's authorship on stylistic grounds, there were some reservations, notably from Jean Ferré, Robert Raines, and Donald Posner who proposed the painting to be a collaboration of Watteau and Mercier at best, with the latter responsible for the figures.

Exhibition history

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

• La Boudeuse at the Hermitage Museum official website
• La Boudeuse at the Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill exhibition website
• La Boudeuse (A Capricious Woman) at the Web Gallery of Art

The Chord (L'Accord), alternatively known as The Serenader (Le Donneur de sérénades) and Mezzetino (Mézetin), is an oil on panel painting in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau, variously dated c. 1714–1717. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, The Chord passed through numerous private collections, until it came into possession of Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, son of King Louis Philippe I; as part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, The Chord was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.

At 24 by 17 cm, the painting forms a single-figure full-length composition that depicts a male guitarist in theatrical costume, sitting amid the landscape. The guitarist, widely associated with the commedia dell'arte character Mezzetino, is a recurring subject in Watteau's art; based on a red and black chalk drawing owned by the Louvre, it is also present in two other paintings by Watteau, The Surprise (now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles) and Pleasures of Love (now in the Alte Meister Gallery, Dresden).

Provenance

The recorded provenance of The Chord begins in the mid-18th century, when it was in possession of the fermier géneral Marin Delahaye (1684-1753); at the sale after his death, held in Paris on January 1, 1754, the painting was lot 47, described as "un tableau peint sur bois, représentant Mezetin par Vatteau, de 10 pouces de haut sur 7 pouces de large, dans sa bordure dorée," and sold for 300 livres to the certain Beauchamp. Soon after that sale, it entered the collection of the painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun (1748-1813), the husband of the prominent portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; Lebrun put The Chord on sale twice, as lot 58 at a May 1765 auction, and as lot 40 at a November 1778 auction respectively.

In the 1780s, the painting belonged to Antoine Claude Chariot (1733-1815), the commissaire-priseur du Châtelet; at a sale in January 1788, The Chord and another Watteau painting in the Chariot collection, The Worried Lover, were lot 44 sold back to Lebrun for 221 livres. Lebrun didn't keep the pair for long, and put it at auction on April 11, 1791, only to have them bought back for 132 livres. For a brief time, The Chord was owned by the art dealer Alexandre Joseph Paillet, and was sold as lot 25 at auction for 120 livres on February 13, 1792. Decades later, the painting resurfaced as lot 150 at auction in Paris on March 20–22, 1824, before entering the collection of Marquis André Joseph Maison (1798–1869), son of the prominent general and diplomat Nicolas Joseph Maison; with part of that collection, it was sold in 1868 to Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, the fifth son of King Louis Philippe I. As part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, The Chord was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.

Among Watteau scholars, The Chord is generally attributed to the middle years of the artist's career. In the 1950 catalogue raisonné, the Louvre staff curator Hélène Adhémar listed the painting as a Spring-Summer 1716 work; in a 1959 study, the painter and connoisseur Jacques Mathey attributed it to c. 1714. In the 1968 catalogue raisonné, the Italian art historian Ettore Camesasca dated the painting c. 1715; in the 1980s, the French scholar Marianne Roland Michel suggested a ca. 1715–1716 dating. In 2002, Renaud Temperini gives a slightly later dating of ca. 1716–1717.

Analysis

The Chord is an oil on panel painting, shaped as a vertical rectangle that measures 24 by 17 cm. It shows a full-length single figure of a male guitarist in a theatrical costume, seated tuning a guitar amid a landscape; the man's head, turned to the left, is barren. He wears a rose-colored coat and knee-britches slashed with yellow, embellished with blue ribbons and shoes with blue rosettes.

Related works

The painting has often been confused with Mezzetin, a painting by Watteau held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which also depicts the same character from the Italian theatre. However, the two characters do not have the same physique at all. Another Mezzetin by Watteau is kept at the Pierpont Morgan Library.

The preparatory drawing for the painting is kept in particular at the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts, other very similar drawings are kept at the Petit Palais Museum, the Louvre and formerly in the Bordeaux-Groult collection in Paris.

Gallery

References

Sources

Further reading

Two Studies of an Actor is the name given to a sheet of drawings in the trois crayons technique by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau. Dated between 1716 and 1721, the sheet was once in the collection of Watteau's friend, the manufacturer and publisher Jean de Jullienne; passing through a number of private collectors, it was acquired in 1874 by the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, where it remains.

The sheet consists of two compositional half-length studies of a sitting old man wearing a hat, holding a cane in the left hand; the left figure has the old man shown en face, and the right one respectively has him shown in a three-quarters turn. In scholarship, the sheet is noted as an example of Watteau's approach with multiple treatment of a single figure, compared to these of Anthony van Dyck and Philippe de Champaigne found in their respective portraits of Charles I of England and Cardinal Richelieu.

The identity of the sitter remains somewhat ambiguous among Watteau scholars; two of the artist's contemporaries were thought to be the sitter: the Catholic priest Pierre-Maurice Haranger and the Comédie-Française player Pierre Le Noir, sieur de La Thorillière. Coming from either of these identities, the sheet is related to numerous paintings and drawings by Watteau.

Provenance and dating

In the 18th century, the sheet belonged to Watteau's friend and patron, the manufacturer and publisher Jean de Jullienne; it was said by Edmond de Goncourt that the sheet was lot 787, sold for 82 livres at the sale held after Jullienne's death in Spring 1767, described as "Deux hommes en habit de paysan; ils sont assis, la main gauche de chacun est posée sur une canne en béquille."

After remaining obscure for a century, the sheet resurfaced in the 1870s, passing through numerous private collectors known only by name. By 1871, it was in possession of a certain De Vos; then it passed to another owner, a Rotterdam-based collector D. Vis Blokhuyzen. After Blokhuyzen's death, the sheet was sold as lot 664 at auction on October 23, 1871 to the German entrepreneur Barthold Suermondt (1818–1887); as part of Suermondt's collection, the sheet has been acquired for the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, in 1874.

In a 1984 monograph on Watteau, Marianne Roland Michel dates the sheet as earlier as c. 1716–1717, relying on the drawing style. in the 1984–1985 exhibition catalogue, the National Gallery of Art curator Margaret Morgan Grasselli dated the drawings c. 1716; in a later 1987 dissertation on Watteau's drawings, she re-attributed the sheet to final months of Watteau's life, c. 1721. In the 1996 catalogue raisonné, Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat give the sheet an earlier dating of c. 1720.

Related prints

In the 1720s, François Boucher had the sheet engraved in reverse as two separate etchings; the etching after the left figure was published in 1726 as plate 69 in volume one of the Figures de différents caractères, while the etching after the right figure, in which Boucher notably replaced the hat with a skullcap, was respectively published in 1728 as plate 198 in the said anthology's volume two. Boucher's etching of the right figure has been later reproduced by Claude Du Bosc, captioned La Tourilere comédien. Prints after the Berlin sheet were recorded in the 1875 catalogue raisonné of Watteau's art compiled by Edmond de Goncourt; various reissues of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's anthology L'art du dix-huitième siècle mention "la planche des «Différents caractères» qui passe pour représenter l'acteur La Thorillière," which is likely a reference to Du Bosc's print rather than Boucher's ones. Besides from prints, there is a sheet of sanguine studies in the Louvre that notably features a partial copy after the left figure of the Berlin sheet.

Identity of the sitter

Aside from Goncourt's notes, it is thought that in an 1896 article published in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the playwright and poet Gaston Schéfer was the first to try and identify the sitter of the drawings, available to him through Boucher's etchings. In a copy of the Figures de différents caractères held by the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Schéfer discovered that the impression of folio 198 has an inscription by eighteenth-century hand, thought to be that of Pierre-Jean Mariette, saying "Portrait de l'abbé Larancher (struck-through) Haranger Chanoine de Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, ami de Watteau." From the inscription, Schéfer suggested that while the attire appears to be a theatrical one, the sitter was actually a priest, namely the Abbé Pierre-Maurice Haranger (ca. 1655–1735), canon at the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois who was one of Watteau's closest friends. It has been stated by Schéfer that to Watteau, it was not a controversial thing to depict a Catholic priest wearing an unusual attire, for it wasn't so to the Church; Schéfer provides a similar example of Charles-Nicolas Cochin who produced a drawing of his priest friend, the Abbé François-Emmanuel Pommyer, wearing a peasant dress. Aware of Du Bosc's print, Schéfer said that the priest's appearance was fine enough to make one confuse him with an actor; it has also been presumed by Schéfer that a study of Haranger, similar to the Berlin sheet, was probably used for the rightmost figure in a painting by Watteau, The Coquettes.

In the 1920s, Schéfer's point was objected by Émile Dacier, Albert Vuaflart and Jacques Herold — the group behind the four-volume study of prints after Watteau's paintings; Dacier, Vuaflart, and Herold suggested that Watteau would hardly had an intention to depict a priest in what the scholars supposed to be a peasant or theatrical dress. In contrary to Schéfer's attribution that was based on a hand-written inscription, they relied on the engraved inscription from Du Bosc's copy after Boucher that claimed the Comédie-Française player Pierre Le Noir, sieur de la Thorillière (1659–1731), to be the sitter. These objections caused a debate among Watteau scholars, noticeably complicated by the lack of surviving and/or authentic portraits of both supposed sitters; part of scholars accepted Schéfer's attribution, while some other authors have adopted Dacier and Vuaflart's one.

Exhibition history

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

• Zwei Portraitstudien des Kanonikers von Saint-Germain l´Auxerrois, Abbé Pierre-Maurice Haranger at museum-digital