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JEAN-FRANÇOIS HEIM
TABLEAUX - DESSINS - SCULPTURES
LOUIS-GABRIEL BLANCHET
Versailles 1701 - Rome 1772
French school
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF EDME BOUCHARDON
Oil on canvas
H. 0,91 m; W. 0,77 m
DATE: ca. 1728-1732
PROVENANCE: Private collection, France
The identification of the sitter with Edme Bouchardon is based on a comparison with
some of his self-portraits. The closest match comes from a sketchbook dating back to his stay
in Rome, which is kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York1. Three other self-portraits
are in the Louvre2. Similarities with our portrait can easily be found: strong lips, big eyes with
thick and short eyebrows, an aquiline nose and a short forehead.
Bouchardon, Self-portrait, part of the Vademecum, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Bouchardon, Self-portrait to the right,
wearing a hat, Louvre Inv. 24313
Bouchardon, Self-portrait in profile towards
left, Louvre Inv. 23847
1
Sketchbook called Vade-mecum, kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, see Cara Dufour Dension, Le
dessin français. Chefs d’œuvres de la Pierpont Morgan Library, exh. cat. Paris, 1993, p. 104-106 (ill. p. 105, no.
45).
2
Inv. 24313, 23847 et 35119.
134, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France
Tél. : +33 1 53 75 06 46 - Fax : +33 1 53 75 06 50
[email protected] - www.galerieheim.fr
Jean-François HEIM – EURL au capital de 7622,45 €
RC Paris : B 391 376 415 code APE : 525 Z
N° d’identification européen FR 32391376415
JEAN-FRANÇOIS HEIM
TABLEAUX - DESSINS - SCULPTURES
Edme Bouchardon was a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome from 1723 to
1732. Blanchet could have painted him there between his arrival in Rome in November 1728
and Bouchardon’s departure in the spring of 1732. Residents at the academy would frequently
do portraits of one another3.
Louis-Gabriel Blanchet was born in Versailles in 17014. Little is known about his
artistic training, although it probably took place in Paris. In 1727 Blanchet obtained the
second Grand Prix, after Pierre Subleyras. Nevertheless, Blanchet is admitted to the French
Academy in Rome, residing from 1728 at the Palazzo Mancini. There, he made friends with
Pierre Subleyras and Joseph Vernet. Blanchet was one of the rare French artists of the 18th
century who never returned to France. A painter’s time at the French Academy in Rome was
usually limited to three or four years, and Blanchet should have left by spring 1732. But it was
only in November 1733 that his name was definitely removed from the list of boarders. But
having found a significant patron in the Duc de Saint-Aignan, the French ambassador to the
Holy See5, he managed to retain his lodgings at the Palazzo Mancini. From 1735 to 1737,
Blanchet assisted Pierre Subleyras in an important commission for the convent of the Canons
Regular of the Lateran in Asti6.
At the Stuart court in exile in Rome, Blanchet frequented the English painters James
Barry, James Forrester and Richard Wilson. Between 1737 and 1739, he was commissioned
for several portraits of the Stuart family7, which probably reinforced his reputation as a
portrait painter.
Blanchet had always kept in touch with the French Academy in Rome. Jean-François
de Troy, director from 1738 till 1751, was a big help to Blanchet8, who had regular financial
troubles due to his inconstant and spendthrift nature. In 1752, he was imprisoned for unpaid
debts but was released shortly afterwards thanks to the contribution of French friends. In 1973
though, Natoire, who became director in 1752, refused to help him any further. Only his
marriage in 1755 with Annunziata Dies, daughter of a Venetian goldsmith and a French
mother, eased Blanchet’s financial situation. He died in Rome in 1772.
3
Pierre Subleyras (circle of), Portrait of Guillaume Coustou, Christie’s, 2 Nov. 2005, lot. 90.
Blanchet was not born in Paris in 1705, see Olivier Michel’s article on Blanchet in Saur Allgemeines
Künstlerlexikon, t. 11, Munich, Leipzig, 1995, p. 396-397. Our text is mainly based on: Olivier Michel, « Un
pittore francese a Roma, Louis-Gabriel Blanchet », Strenna dei Romanisti, 18 April 1996, p. 467-486. see also
Edgar Peters Bowron, Joseph J. Rishel, Art in Rome in the eighteenth century, exh. cat. Philadelphia and
London, 2000, p. 327-328.
5
M. Le Moël, Pierre Rosenberg, « La collection de tableaux du duc de Saint-Aignan », Revue de l’art, 1969 (6),
p. 51-67.
6
Le repas chez Simon, H. 2 ,15 m ; W. 6,77 m, 1737, musée du Louvre, see Olivier Michel, Pierre Rosenberg,
Subleyras 1699-1749, exh. cat. Paris, 1987, p. 82.
7
Three of these portraits are kept in the National Portrait Gallery, London: Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 190,5
cm x 141 cm ; Henry Benedict Maria Clement Stuart, Cardinal York, 188,6 cm x 140,3 cm ; Prince James
Francis Edward Stuart, 96,5 cm x 73 cm.
8
De Troy entrusted him with two copies in the Vatican, Victory of Constantine over Maxentius (finished in
1746, paid on May 30th, 1750, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille) and The Vision of Constantine (finished in 1752,
Musée du Louvre, Paris), both done for the Gobelins tapestry factory.
4
134, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France
Tél. : +33 1 53 75 06 46 - Fax : +33 1 53 75 06 50
[email protected] - www.galerieheim.fr
Jean-François HEIM – EURL au capital de 7622,45 €
RC Paris : B 391 376 415 code APE : 525 Z
N° d’identification européen FR 32391376415
JEAN-FRANÇOIS HEIM
TABLEAUX - DESSINS - SCULPTURES
Most of Blanchet’s portraits date from before 1739 and from the early 1750s, when the
English tourists returned to Rome after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). Blanchet had an
elegant, luminous, and colourful style of painting. The present picture shows his naturalistic
and truthful approach to portrait painting. He was a refined colourist and his paintings are
renowned for the luminosity of his whites and the richness in the handling of oil paint. The
somewhat dramatic pose of the sitter and the spontaneous brushstrokes give this portrait a
character of immediacy. Unlike most portraits of English travellers or French residents
painted by Blanchet in the years 1750-1760, this portrait emanates an air of intimacy. Another
example of an artist's portrait painted by Blanchet in a very close spirit in 1736 is the one of
Giovanni Paolo Pannini9. On the other hand, the portraits of the Stuart family dating back to
those same years are more formal and more distant in character.
Bouchardon is shown here at the age of about thirty, with his right hand on Homer's
portrait, a plaster cast of the famous Hellenistic sculpture kept in the Museo Capitolino in
Rome. The presence of this antique is not surprising as it was often studied by the students of
the academy, but it also underlines Bouchardon’s keen interest for Antiquity. A portrait of
Bouchardon at about the same time, possibly painted by himself, is attributed today to PierLeone Ghezzi and is kept in the Uffizi in Florence. It shows the sculptor with the bust of
baron Stosch, a portrait of the antiquarian that Bouchardon had created in 1727.
Blanchet, Supposed portrait of Edme
Bouchardon, galerie Jean-François Heim
Pier-Leone Ghezzi, Portrait of Edme
Bouchardon, Florence, Uffizi Inv. 1890
We are grateful to M. Peter Bowron, M. Christophe Leribault and M. Olivier Michel
for their help in writing the catalogue entry of this work.
9
Sotheby’s Londres, 5 juillet 1995, lot 54.
134, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France
Tél. : +33 1 53 75 06 46 - Fax : +33 1 53 75 06 50
[email protected] - www.galerieheim.fr
Jean-François HEIM – EURL au capital de 7622,45 €
RC Paris : B 391 376 415 code APE : 525 Z
N° d’identification européen FR 32391376415