jean-franois heim - Galerie Jean

JEAN-FRANÇOIS HEIM
TABLEAUX - DESSINS - SCULPTURES
LOUIS-GABRIEL BLANCHET
Versailles 1701 - Rome 1772
French school
PRESUMED 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 the comparison with
some of his self-portraits. The closest is in a sketch book from his stay in Rome, kept in the
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York1. Three self-portraits are in the Louvre2. We can easily
find similarities with our portrait: 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 to the
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 in the French Academy in Rome from 1723 till
1732. Blanchet could have painted him there between his arrival in Rome in November, 1728
and Bouchardon’s departure in spring, 1732. Residents at the academy would frequently do
portraits of one another3.
Louis-Gabriel Blanchet was born in Versailles in 17014. Only little is known about his
artistic training which probably took place in Paris. In 1727 Blanchet obtained the second
Grand Prix after Pierre Subleyras. Nevertheless admitted to the French Academy in Rome,
Blanchet resided at the Palazzo Mancini from 1728 on. There he made friends with Pierre
Subleyras and Joseph Vernet. Blanchet was one of the rare French artists of the XVIIIth
century who never returned to France. The stay of a painter at the French Academy in Rome
was usually limited to three or four years, and Blanchet should have left by spring, 1732. But
only in November, 1733 his name was definitely removed from the list of boarders. He
nevertheless managed to retain his lodgings at the Palazzo Mancini because he had found a
significant patron with the Duc de Saint-Aignan, French ambassador to the Holy See5. 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 court of the exiled Stuarts in Rome, Blanchet frequented the English painters
James Barry, James Forrester and Richard Wilson. Between 1737 and 1739, he was
commissioned several portraits of the Stuart family7, which certainly 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 for Blanchet8, who regularly had
financial woes du to his inconstancy and spendthrift character. In 1752, he was imprisoned for
debt but released shortly afterwards thanks to the contributions of his French friends. Natoire,
who became director in 1752, refused definitively to help him in 1753. 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 wasn’t 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. Philadephia 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 ; L. 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 beginning of 1750s,
when the English tourists returned to Rome after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748).
Blanchet had an elegant, luminous, and colorful style of painting. The present picture shows
his naturalistic and truthful approach to portrait painting. He was a refined colorist and his
paintings are distinguished by the luminosity of his whites and the richness of 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 done in the same years, keep as for them, a more formal and more distant 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 so studied by the students of the
academy, but it also underlines Bouchardon’s keen interest for Antiquity. A portrait of
Bouchardon dating of the same years, painted maybe 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 Bouchardon had created of the antiquarian in 1727.
Blanchet, Presumed 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