51 J ean-Baptiste Oudry’s sources for his famous animal paintings and drawings were varied. If the macaw seen in this drawing was in the royal menagerie, it may have been done on the spot, for Oudry has made a lively and perceptive depiction. Sone of a Parisian painter, Oudry (French, 1686–1755) studied briefly with the visiting Marseillais artist Michel Serre before being apprenticed to Nicolas de Largillière and attending the Académie de Saint-Luc and the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He remained with the fashionable portrait painter for five years, until 1710, during which time he qualified as master in the Académie de Saint-Luc. In keeping with his training he began as a portraitist, but was agrée in 1717 and reçu in 1719 to the Académie royale as a history painter. The status afforded him by this membership smoothed his way once he turned to animal painting in the early 1720s.2 His interest began with hunting scenes, and his enormous Stag Hunt of 1726, now in Stockholm,3 effectively launched his career. Even before this he received royal commissions, such as one in 1724 for Versailles, and his talent was recognized through the use of a studio and later lodgings in the Tuileries. In the late 1720s he gained the patronage of Louis Fagon, Intendant des finances, and the Marquis de Beringhen, both well-placed at Inscriptions none Marks none Provenance Christie’s, London, 15 December 2000, lot 136; L’Antiquaire & the Connoisseur; Museum purchase 13 Jean-Baptiste Oudry Study of a Macaw, n.d. Black and white chalks on blue laid paper, 24.1 x 38.4 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 2010.78 “If during the royal hunts some unusual bird was killed, it was taken straight to him before going into the cabinet of natural history. The same was true for any exotic animals that died in the menagerie. And hunters liked to send him game from all over. [S’il arrivât que, dans les chasses royales, on tuât quelque oiseau singulier, il lui étoit porté aussitôt avant que de passer au cabinet d’histoire naturelle. Il en étoit de même des animaux étrangers qui morroient à la ménagerie. Enfin les chasseurs es faisoient plaisir de lui envoyer du gibier de toutes parts.]”1
52 court. During the same period he began two intensive projects, the first at the King’s command to follow royal hunts and record them in drawings for later paintings, and the second a series of 276 drawings for the Fables of La Fontaine, engraved and published much later. The support of Fagan was instrumental in Oudry’s appointment as artistic director at the Beauvais tapestry manufactory, a post he retained even as he became involved at the rival Gobelins works. Other patrons included Carl Gustaf, Count Tessin, Sweden’s ambassador from 1739 to 1742, and Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, resulting in the large collections of his work in Stockholm and Schwerin. In 1739 Oudry began a series of paintings of animals in the Versailles menagerie. He was made professor at the Académie royale in 1743 and given lodgings in the Louvre the next year. By this time he had long enjoyed esteem among critics and, in addition to these major patrons, he provided paintings to a wide audience. Made inspector at the Gobelins tapestry works in 1748, he endured controversy among the staff there and among students at the Académie royale but the support of his colleagues remained strong. Ill health brought on by two strokes precipitated his death in 1755. “Oudry in some ways cared more about his drawings than his paintings; he made portfolios... He saw them as a store he was building for his family. Almost none left his hands during his lifetime. [M. Oudry étoit en quelque sorte plus attaché à ses dessins qu’à ses tableaux; ili en formoit des portefeuilles... Il les regardoit comme un fonds qu’il accumuloit pour sa famille. On n’en a preque point eu de son vivant.]”4 Though as Christine Giviskos notes, Oudry sold drawings to Count Tessin, the publisher of the La Fontaine series, and Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 5 it seems he did keep most of his drawings while he was alive. In their portfolios, the drawings must have been a precious repertory of common and exotic animals in interesting poses, ready for possible incorporation into paintings. To this end, perhaps, a significant number of the works have the aspect of “portraits”—a single animal standing alone, with no context, often addressing the viewer. Some of Oudry’s drawings were after animals depicted by his predecessors, among them Pieter Boel and François Desportes. These entered his repertory along with those done after life, while he made others after his own paintings for sale, according to Xavier Salmon.6 No model for the Crocker drawing has yet been located, making it likely it was drawn from life. A group of drawings by Oudry include parrots and their relatives. Two of these, which include pastel, make it possible to identify the bird as the macaw ara ararauna.7 With yellow and blue plumage, this macaw has a larger beak and a longer tail than the more common parrot and inhabits the tropics exclusively. It seems that Oudry preferred this type of bird, as it appears in two still-lifes with various kinds of fish now in the Cooper-Hewitt8 as well as other drawings where it appears alone. One of these, of similar technique and draughtsmanship to the Crocker drawing but posed differently, was used by the artist for a painting now in Strasbourg.9 Three others seem to have been acquired by Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin along with his Oudry paintings. All dated to the early 1730s, none of this group of drawings reappears in the artist’s oeuvre of paintings, an exception for him.10 Drawn from life, partly in brilliant color, the birds appear in a variety
53 of poses, one of which inspired the pose of the previously discussed drawing.11 Finally, La Fontaine’s fable “Les deux perroquets, le roy et son fils” includes the birds; if the print made by Antoine Radigues after Oudry’s drawing is any indication, he used this macaw there as well.12 The Crocker drawing fits well in this group. Lacking the color of the two Schwerin drawings, the macaw is nonetheless lively, posed as if just alighting on an unseen branch, looking inquisitively at the viewer. Oudry has captured the differing textures of feathers, beak, and skin, and the angle of the long tail provides a sense of motion. Very much in the “portrait” mode, it should be dated to the late 1730s, slightly after the drawings in Schwerin. 7
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55 14 Charles-Antoine Coypel Christ on the Cross, n.d. Black and red chalks with touches of white chalk on cream laid paper, 35 x 26.5 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by the Anne and Malcolm McHenry Curatorial Fund, 2019.101 The words of Charles Coypel to his colleagues at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture recommend the study of others’ works to improve one’s own. He goes on to mention Raphael’s study of Michelangelo and Annibale Carracci’s drawings after Raphael as models for imitation. In the present sheet, he puts these ideas into practice. Scion of a dynasty of painters that included his father Antoine and grandfather Noël, Coypel (French, 1694–1752), was destined for success from an early age. Considered a prodigy, he was well-connected: the Duc d’Orleans even commissioned the artist’s father to make a self-portrait with his promising son Charles. Taught by François de Troy, Nicolas de Largillière, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, Coypel had no Italian trip to perfect his art but nonetheless was agréé and reçu to the Académie royale in 1715—unusually, on the same day. Within two years he was both ennobled and made peintre ordinaire du Roy at the age of 23, the latter partly perhaps on the basis of his extremely successful tapestry cartoons on subjects from Cervantes. In 1722, he inherited his father’s atelier in the Louvre which he joined to his grandfather’s, which was already in his possession, and began as curator for the Cabinet “Let us learn to assess our own works in light of the beauties we find in others’; let us not blush to study them; let us not fear the accusation of being servile imitators, when we have the ability to take as our own the qualities that we lack, and to join them to those we have. [...[A]pprenons à critiquer nos propres ouvrages à la vûë des beautez que nous découvrons dans ceux des autres; ne rougissons point de chercher à les étudier; ne craignons point qu’on nous accuse d’être de serviles imitateurs, quand nous aurons l’adresse de nous approprier les parties qui nous manquent, & de les joindre à celles que nous possedons.]”1 Inscriptions none Marks none Provenance Nicolas Joly, by 2019; Museum purchase Literature Unpublished
56 des Dessins du Roy, a post he held for thirty years. In this period he also wrote plays, including one entitled La Poésie et la Peinture, but gave it up as he did not meet with the same success as in his visual art. His experience with the stage was influential nonetheless, as he later created designs based on opera librettos and finally changed his style to a more theatrical one, with stage-like settings, few figures, and declamatory poses and gestures. Coypel’s service to art institutions was remarkable: professor at the Académie royale from 1733, he became its rector in 1746 and a year later its director, in addition to co-founding the École des Élèves Protégés to promote history painting among younger artists shortly before his death in 1752. A more Classicizing artist than his father, influenced by Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun more than by his elder peers, Coypel was valued by his contemporaries but his theatrical style later led to criticism and disfavor which lasted until recent years. Among Coypel’s male nudes there are several that are conceived similarly to the Crocker drawing. His 1731 painting of Saint Sebastian in Meaux focuses on a swooping, graceful pose, arms outstretched, the head rolled back with a similar upward gaze. (fig.14) According to Thierry Lefrançois, Guido Reni’s Samson in Bologna is a likely ultimate model for the pose.2 Less theatrical but still expressive is a drawing of Christ on the Cross before clouds, the body not hanging but almost rising as if anticipating the coming Resurrection.3 Again, the head is rolled back and turned upwards. However, the closest comparison is not Coypel’s work at all, but Michelangelo’s drawing of the Crucifixion presented to his friend Vittoria Colonna and dated 1538–1541, (fig. 15)4 made famous by Giulio Bonasone’s engraving of around the same time.5 Coypel’s use of the pose is exact, down to the placement of the proper right foot over the left, the hands, one with index raised and the other closed, the slight forward projection of the proper left shoulder, the angle of the head, and the exact folds and position of the drapery. The relationship between eighteenth-century artists and the works of their predecessors and contemporaries is key to understanding possible purposes for Coypel’s drawing. We have seen in his words above how studying other artist’s works is a continual process of comparison, emulation, and correction of one’s own art. In that passage he seems to refer to his peers as models for comparison, but he goes on to say: “Did Raphael not add a new greatness to his own upon examining Michelangelo’s works, without casting aside his own restrained simplicity and noble grace. [Raphaël n’a-t-il fig. 14. Charles-Antoine Coypel, Saint Sebastian, 1752. Oil on canvas, 96 x 67 cm. Musée Bossuet, Meaux
57 pas ajouté une nouvelle grandeur à la sienne à la vûë des ouvrages de Michel-Ange, sans se dépoüiller de la sage simplicité & des graces nobles qui le caracterisent.]”6 He thus places the idea of selective imitation into the grand tradition of the past, by implication assimilating his own artistic habit to it. It is a habit that both crosses generations and produces objects attesting to the practice: “I have in my hands some studies after Raphael by Annibale Carracci that are handsome enough to prove he was already worthy of his great reputation at the moment he made them. [J’ai entre mes mains des études d’Annibal d’après Raphael d’une beauté à faire comprendre qu’il étoit déjà digne de sa grande reputation lorsqu’il les a faites.]”7 Coypel’s Christ is not a copy of Michelangelo’s. The softer, thinner face and body, the presence of the crown of thorns, and the absence of the angels, the skull, or even clearlydefined space all argue against intent to reproduce. The artist takes Michelangelo’s composition and transforms it into an eighteenth-century Crucifixion instead. Like Annibale, already a mature artist, drawing after Raphael, and like Raphael drawing after Michelangelo, Coypel searches within the work of a past artist to find those strengths he can incorporate into his own style. He has already done this in the work of Guido Reni, whose Samson he has plumbed for influences he uses in his Saint Sebastian. Coypel’s choice of Michelangelo may be related to his Classicism, selecting the great Renaissance master for imitation as he has selected Poussin and Le Brun from later generations. It is also suited to his interest in the theater, Michelangelo’s emotional expression being one reason for the frequent use of his works in the Academic tradition. In the Crocker drawing, Coypel, a mature artist, reacquaints himself with the work of a High Renaissance master. At the same time, he creates a drawing that is unquestionably his own, with a graceful, less militantly powerful Christ and a shift of emphasis towards salvation rather than suffering. Suitable for further elaboration into a print or painting, Coypel’s drawing invites the educated viewer to make the connection with Michelangelo and to marvel at the clever transformation of a famous composition. 7 fig. 15 Michelangelo, Christ on the Cross, 1538–1541. Black chalk on buff laid paper, 36.8 x 26.8 cm. British Museum, London, inv. no. 1895,0915.504
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59 One of relatively few truly Classicizing artists who made their careers in the Netherlands, Jacob de Wit (Dutch, 1695–1754) enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime, though in the nineteenth century his reputation suffered an eclipse from which it has only recently begun to recover. Born in Amsterdam, de Wit was apprenticed there to the decorative painter Albert van Spiers. In 1710 he moved to Antwerp, where he stayed about five years. This was a transformative experience for him: already introduced to the visual language of Classicism by Spiers, he deepened his knowledge under the history painter Jacob van Hal and through close study of the works of Pieter Paul Rubens, whom he collected as well. After his admission to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1714, he returned to Amsterdam where he became a painter of religious and mythological scenes. But he is most famous for what he called “witjes”—a pun on his name and the Dutch word for white—which were decorative paintings in grisaille, most often featuring putti in allegorical scenes. He created a fashion for them among the Amsterdam élite, such that many still survive in houses along the city’s most prestigious canals. Adding to their appeal was the trompe-l’oeil effect, as they were easily mistaken for marble reliefs. The artist enjoyed a steady stream of commissions, not only for these but also for larger decorative programs, both private and public. Perhaps the most important of the latter was the 1738 ceiling for the Old Town Hall in the Hague. De Wit brings the skill in modelling and lighting he developed in the “witjes” to the Crocker drawing. Figures, animals, and the setting are made believable by the careful Inscriptions black ink, lower left: J d Wit F.; verso, black chalk, lower left: gr. ... 2% Marks none Provenance private US collection; Christopher Bishop, by 2021; Museum purchase Literature unpublished 15 Jacob de Wit Ceres Relinquishing her Dragons to Triptolemus, circa 1732 Pen and black ink, brush and gray washes over black chalk on cream laid paper, 12 x 24. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by A.J. and Susana Molinet Watson and Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 2022.12.1
60 deployment of wash in at least three dilutions, resulting in an evenly lit and systematic scene. He balances the somewhat complicated figural interaction at right with the writhing bodies of the winged dragons, one of whom raises his head to the sky to roar. Christopher Bishop first connected the drawing to its corresponding print in the 1732 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published in Amsterdam by Wetstein, Wetstein and Smith.1 An elaborate set of two volumes intended for a learned and wealthy audience, it was published in Latin with cross-page translations in Dutch, English, and French, with the latter two versions dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke and Louis XV. The engravings accompanying the text were arranged by Bernard Picart and included prints after sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists, as well as after de Wit, his Dutch contemporaries Jan Punt and Louis Fabritius Dubourg, and Picart himself. The subject is from the fifth book of the Metamorphoses. 2 Calliope sings the story directly after that of Arethusa, turning to the tale of Triptolemus, the son of Celeus, king of Eleusis. In the 1732 Amsterdam translation by Arthur Mainwaring: Here Arethusa stopt; then Ceres takes Her golden Carr, and yokes her fiery Snakes; With a just Rein, along Mid-Heaven she flies O’er earth, and seas, and cuts the yielding Skies. She halts at Athens, dropping like a Star, And to Triptolemus resigns her Carr. Parent of Seed, she gave him fruitful Grain, And bid him teach to till and plough the Plain; The Seed to sow, as well in fallow Fields, As where the Soil, manur’d, a richer Harvest yields. The youth o’er Asia, and o’er Europe drives, Till at the court of Lyncus he arrives.3 Triptolemus offers Lyncus, king of Scythia, the gift of agriculture that Ceres has entrusted to him. Lyncus, jealous of such a prize, wants credit for its invention himself and though he has received his guest with magnificence, attempts to kill him while he sleeps. At the moment his sword reaches Triptolemus’ body, Ceres changes him into a lynx. De Wit has chosen the moment Ceres consigns her dragon-led chariot to Triptolemus, leaving Lyncus’ later betrayal implied. He heightens the drama in various ways, first by making Triptolemus almost recoil as he is handed the reins, a moment that echoes the story of Phaethon, also a demi-god, whose attempt to drive a divine chariot ended in disaster. An unseen wind ruffles Triptolemus’ hair and the precious sheaves behind him, while the writhing, bellowing dragons add to the moment as they protest their lot. The drawing, made with consummate technique and dramatic verve, is rather more lively than the engraving. As such, it would have been at least as appropriate as the basis for one of de Wit’s mythological canvases in Herrengracht mansions as for the print made for Picart’s illustration cycle. 7
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63 A specialist in animal imagery, especially the hunt, Johann Elias Ridinger (German, 1698–1767) had a long career in Augsburg’s printmaking industry, operating his own publishing house for over forty years. This drawing, created for a print dated 1744, was included in a series of 1768, a year after the artist’s death, published by his son Martin Elias. Ridinger was born in Ulm, the son of a scribe. He trained there with Christoph Resch starting at the age of 14. Four years later he moved to Augsburg and studied animal draughtsmanship under Johannes Falck. His talents attracted the attention of the diplomat Wolfgang Freiherr von Metternich, a great devotee of horsemanship and the hunt. Ridinger spent three years with him in Regensburg, participating in these events and recording them in drawings. Upon his return to Augsburg, he studied printmaking with Georg Philipp Rugendas. In 1723, Ridinger set up his own business in the city’s crowded publishing market. Working in etching, engraving, and mezzotint, he produced many series—hunter portraits, hunting scenes, equestrian scenes, depictions of exotic beasts, even Old Testament scenes, all focused on animals. In the end these numbered more than 1,600, some of which were used for Meissen porcelain designs and etched gun decoration.1 Ridinger was made Protestant director of the Augsburg Kunstakademie in 1759, serving with the Catholic Johann Georg Bergmüller and his successor Matthias Günther. He died in 1767. Recently identified, the Crocker drawing is preparatory to an etching in a group of 100 depicting unusual stags and other animals hunted by gentlemen, published Inscriptions none Marks Lugt 3561 (Polakovits) lower right; Lugt 2540 (J W Newman) lower right Provenance John Winthrop Newman; Victor Winthrop Newman; Matthias Polakovits; his sale, Couturier et Nicolay at Drouot, Paris, 4 March 1988, lot 11; Lempertz, Cologne, 17 November 1988, lot 324; Thomas Le Claire, by 2008; Im Kinsky, Vienna, 18 October 2017, lot 502; Arnoldi-Livie, by 2020; Museum purchase Literature Im Kinsky, Vienna, 18 October 2017, lot 502; Lempertz, Cologne, 17 November 1988, lot 324; Couturier et Nicolay at Drouot, Paris, 4 March 1988, lot 11 16 Johann Elias Ridinger A Hunting Dog Attacking a Goose, n.d. Pen and gray ink, brush and gray wash on cream laid paper, 30.7 x 26 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by the Anne and Malcolm McHenry Curatorial Fund, 2020.28.1
64 posthumously in 1768, though the relevant print itself is from 1744.2 The incident, which took place near the town of Riquewihr in Franche-Comté, is from 1736; a fox (not dog) pursued a wild goose that was then shot by a hunter working for the prince of Württemberg, at the time the district’s ruler.3 However memorable the moment was to the Württemberg prince’s hunter, as such woodland triumphs were an important symbol of power and prestige, it means little to us now. The real value of the drawing lies in its dramatic action, its pleasing composition, and its advanced technique. Done in the same direction as the print, the drawing is likely preparatory to it. Centering the animals’ struggle in the low foreground, Ridinger creates strong motion to the left within the churning water. It begins in the bending grasses at right, which arch towards center. The fox—here resembling a hound—plunges with forepaws into the water as it grasps the bird’s wing. Echoing the curve of its back, the outstretched wings merge into the goose’s body to create a graceful, undulating line, interrupted only by the squawking head. This gesture, and the boulder that silhouettes the head, accents the drama by bringing the movement to an abrupt stop. The foreground river rocks share this lateral motion, serving as repoussoirs and bridging the water as well, with their leaved plants that parallel foliage on the far bank. Ridinger creates interest in the upper half of the composition by dividing it in half, a large boulder at right looming over the main action opposite a deep landscape with birch trees. In the landscape, the artist’s quick, sure touch and his adept differentiation of textures reflect his facility with ink and wash. Comparison with the print reveals only one change, but a major one. From drawing to print the animal’s tail and ears change, from docked tail and drooping ears to bushy tail and pointed, upright ears. It seems Ridinger’s first idea was a goose and dog, later changed to goose and fox. Perhaps he wished to emphasize the role of the hunter, whose dog would have retrieved the already wounded bird or, more likely, he adapted an existing composition to fit the fox’s pursuit of the goose at Riquewihr. A drawing of a similar subject, a fox attacking geese in a pond, was sold in 1987 in New York.4 Dated 1748, a few years after the present drawing, it is in a somewhat more linear style, lacking the trees and foliage in the background. Describing an incident from 1738, it belongs to a different series of hunting prints published by the artist’s son in 1778.5 Created in the best of Ridinger’s pen-and-ink style, the Crocker drawing joins a watercolor and a red chalk drawing for the artist’s famous series of animal fables, adding variety to our holdings both in technique and in its subject. 7
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67 An anatomical artist like his brother Jacob, Jan L’Admiral (Dutch, 1699–1773) studied together with him in London under Jacob Christoph Le Blon. His color mezzotints were created mainly after drawings by Bernhard Siegfried Albinus in Leiden and Frederick Ruysch in Amsterdam. In 1738 he illustrated a posthumous edition of the latter’s Icon membrane vasculosae, examining the circulatory system. A contemporary of Jacques Fabian Gautier d’Agoty, another Le Blon student, L’Admiral was less famous as his output was smaller. Other works besides anatomical prints include illustrations for the 1764 edition of Karel van Mander’s Lives, in which a self-portrait appears. This striking drawing is one of only four presently known by L’Admiral. Two are gouache drawings, the first of a skeletal hand shown resting on a draped table (fig. 16) and the second of a foot in a similar position. Attribution of the two is contested between the artist and his brother Jacob.1 A third drawing, preserved like the other two in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, shows patches of human skin and a fingernail pinned to a board or wall. In black chalk on oiled paper, the drawing imitates the transparency of skin itself. (fig. 17)2 Both the Crocker sheet and the Rijksmuseum drawing of a hand depict the same skeletal specimen, since the distinctive break in the fragmental ulna is the same. The Crocker drawing differs from the Rijksmuseum gouache in technique, but also much more. Isolated in space, with no cast shadow or other context, the hand is positioned with Inscriptions black chalk, lower right corner Jan Ladmiral Fecit Marks none Provenance Private collection, Netherlands; Onno van Seggelen; Museum purchase Literature Unpublished 17 Jan L’Admiral Study of the Skeleton of a Left Hand, n.d. Black chalk with touches of white on blue laid paper, 20.6 x 31.4 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by the Anne and Malcolm McHenry Curatorial Fund, 2020.29.1 fig. 17. Jan l’Admiral, Anatomical study of human skin and fingernail, 1737. Graphite on yellowish oiled paper, 10.6 x 16.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-P-1914-4833
68 index finger raised as if to point at something. This quasirhetorical gesture, unnecessary to understanding the anatomy of the hand, brings the drawing beyond the realm of pure science. Perhaps it was intended for Academic artists, the other audience for eighteenth-century anatomical study. The medium, black and white chalk on blue paper, is rather unusual for scientific drawings but quite common in the Academic life drawing room. 7 fig. 16. Jan l’Admiral, Skeleton of a hand, n.d. Brush and gouache on cream laid paper, 22.8 x 19.6 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-T-1910-35
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71 A panorama of Venice’s famous waterfront, crowded in the foreground by a variety of sailboats and gondolas, Guardi’s view transmits the surprise and excitement visitors experienced when arriving in the city by sea. Francesco Guardi’s father Domenico arrived in Venice from Vienna between 1699 and 1702. An artist himself, he was a member of the Austrian nobility whose family originated in the Italian-speaking valleys of Trentino. The second of four children, Francesco (Italian, 1712–1793) likely trained with Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whom his elder sister had married in 1719. He began his career as a history painter, especially of religious scenes, and often collaborated with his elder brother Gianantonio and younger brother Nicolò. Francesco became a member of the Venetian painters’ guild in 1761. Around this time, or a little earlier, he began to devote his talents to vedute, or view paintings, including views of Venice, towns on the terraferma, or imaginative capricci. Several controversies are associated with this aspect of his work. The first is the exact nature of Guardi’s relationship with Canaletto, who, along with Michele Marieschi and Luca Carlevarijs, influenced his work deeply. Whether or not he worked in Canaletto’s studio, or even finished compositions begun by the elder artist, is as yet unresolved. This could, however, have taken place only after Canaletto’s return from a ten-year stay in London in 1756. Since Guardi certainly translated prints by Canaletto to canvas more than once, the relationship may be looser than a direct collaboration. Another controversy has to do with a 1764 diary entry by the nobleman Pietro Gradenigo which mentions the use of a camera obscura for creating his views, a practice Inscriptions none Marks none Provenance William H. Crocker, by 1937; Mary de Limur Weinmann by descent; bequest to the Museum Literature Stephen Ongpin, Settecento veneto, London, 2022, under no. 28 18 Francesco Guardi The Ducal Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore, n.d. Pen and dark brown ink, brush and brown washes over black chalk on cream laid paper, 49.5 x 73 cm. Crocker Art Museum, bequest of Mary de Limur Weinmann, 2019.145.12
72 certainly employed by Canaletto. Here, the topographical liberties and unusual perspective in many of Guardi’s paintings and drawings, as well as the latter’s spontaneity, argue against this. In point of fact, Guardi, an inveterate copyist and adapter of his own and others’ compositions, often did not rely directly on the city before him for his images. This complicates dating to some extent, as the changing profile of Venice’s skyline is not always Guardi’s ultimate source. From the 1760s the artist’s prestige gained him major commissions, such as a series of canvases celebrating the election of Doge Alvise Mocenigo in 1763, a series of six to celebrate the visit of a Russian delegation in 1782, and a visit by Pope Pius IV the same year. Supplying these government commissions, religious ones, and the Grand Tourist forestieri inglesi also mentioned in Gradenigo’s diary, occupied Guardi until his death in 1793. The Crocker drawing belongs to a group of large views dating from 1755—1765 that, as Stephen Ongpin points out, James Byam Shaw defined as reflecting the influence of Canaletto, and as topographically more accurate than his later work. All of large format, the group includes drawings in the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fitzwilliam as well as Ongpin’s own pair, one of which is directly related to the present drawing.1 (fig. 18) Though the darker wash and flecks may distract slightly, the Crocker drawing fits well with the other views in the group. Among them, the draughtsmanship of the British Museum’s drawing of a view that includes Ca’ Rezzonico seems closer to the Crocker drawing, especially in the buildings. The foreground seems rather similar to the Louvre’s Rialto Seen from the Fondamenta del Carbon in the use of wash for describing the water, and to the Fitzwilliam’s Grand Canal with Palazzo Bembo especially in the gondolas and gondoliers. Ongpin’s drawing itself is wider than the Crocker drawing, for example at right where the boat at the margin is more complete, and the foreground extends further towards the fig. 18. Francesco Guardi, Ducal Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore, n.d. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over traces of black chalk on cream laid paper, 46.9 x 80.0 cm. Private collection
73 viewer. In addition, differences in the placement of boats makes the lagoon more expansive, giving the effect almost of a bird’s-eye view, and the buildings themselves are counted off in faint manuscript letters. Another version of the drawing in a private collection, mentioned by Ongpin,2 is rather close in composition to the Crocker drawing, though smaller. The mast at extreme right is included, among other minor differences in the foreground boats, but the prominent clouds in the sky are an addition absent in either the Ongpin or Crocker drawings. A third comparison is a drawing once in the Castiglioni collection in Vienna.3 It is cropped rather more tightly than the Crocker drawing, and again includes prominent clouds. An old photo in the Witt Library mentioned by Ongpin is of the Crocker drawing, but sadly with no indication of collection or date of photography.4 The composition, one of the most characteristic views of Venice, is known in two paintings by Guardi. The first, in the Metropolitan Museum,5 bears minor differences in the tangle of boats at right, especially a galleon which moves towards the left rather than right as in the Crocker drawing. The most significant change is that the painting’s point of view is closer, such that, for example, more of the dome of Saint Mark’s is obscured by its porch than in the drawing. A painting at Waddesdon Manor,6 considered the earlier and prime version of the painting, is more like the Crocker drawing in these respects. It has a pendant, the opposite view looking towards San Giorgio Maggiore from the Piazzetta di San Marco. The corresponding drawing is also owned by Ongpin.7 As pointed out by Ongpin, the façade of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà is depicted as complete in the painting, though work was abandoned shortly after 1760 and not finished until 1906. This is also true of the drawing in his possession and the Crocker drawing, though not of the drawing in a private collection or the Met painting, as the relevant stretch of waterfront is covered by a sail. The latter two are therefore more closely related to each other than the rest.8 7
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75 The art of pleasing was indeed highly developed by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée (French, 1724–1805), for he had a brilliant career. Beginning as an élève protégé in preparation for life as a history painter, he moved to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture to study under Carle van Loo. Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1749, he waited until 1754 to take the trip. Upon his return a year later, he was immediately reçu as a member of the Académie. From this point an unbroken series of aristocratic, royal, and ecclesiastical commissions led to a string of prestigious appointments. Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg from 1760 to 1762, he was called back to Paris to become director of the Académie royale. In 1781 he was made director of the Académie de France à Rome. Finally, in 1804, he was made curator of the Louvre and a chevalier d’honneur by Napoleon. He died a year later. At the same time, he was fulfilling prestigious commissions, Lagrenée collaborated with printmakers with the intent of supplying reproductions of drawings to art students and collectors. The mid-eighteenth century saw a variety of innovations that allowed faithful replication of not only pen and ink but also wash and chalk. Both aquatint, exploited effectively by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince for reproducing wash drawings, and crayon manner engraving for chalk, invented by Jean-Charles François and perfected by Gilles Demarteau, soon spread drawings to the public across Europe. Especially in the case of life drawing, these innovations had an immediate effect on teaching. Students of art, who previously had access only to those drawings in Inscriptions red chalk, lower right corner: L. Lagrenée Marks none Provenance Galerie Alexis Bordes; Jean Bonna; Christie’s New York, 28 January 2020, lot 90; Eric Coatalem; Museum purchase Bibliography Nathalie Strasser, Dessins français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Collection Jean Bonna, Geneva, 2016, no. 84 19 Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée Female Nude from the Back, n.d. Red chalk on cream laid paper, 54 x 39 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by the Anne and Malcolm McHenry Curatorial Fund, 2021.2.1 “The art of painting was for him always the art of pleasing. Successes, practically unconscious ones, marked his footsteps from the moment he entered Apelles’ profession. [...L’art de peindre fut toujours pour lui l’art de la plaire. Des succès, presque à son insu, signalèrent ses pas dès son entrée dans la carrière d’Apelle.]”1
76 institutional collections, soon had a large variety of black- or red chalk nudes in useful poses at their disposal. In addition, since female models were forbidden in French academies except, after 1750, for character heads, and children as models were not customary, crayon manner engraving proved one of the best ways to gain experience with non-Academic figures. Made in more informal surroundings, these nude figures of women and children were presented in the same way as male models from the Académie’s life drawing room.2 This is the case with the Crocker drawing. Engraved by Louis-Marin Bonnet, it is part of a series of thirty nudes he published between 1771 and 1773 that includes compositions by van Loo, Edmé Bouchardon, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Lagrenée. The seventeen female nudes Lagrenée contributed seem to be the largest group of female nudes to have been published by that date. Until then there were only small groups: three after Bouchardon in 1738, six after François Boucher about 1760, and two after Cochin included in Diderot’s Encyclopédie. 3 Lagrenée’s group is also closer to the conventions of the Academic life drawing room than previous ones. Two of Lagrenées other drawings from Bonnet’s series survive in the Louvre.4 Both from the Saint-Morys collection originally, they are in the same mode as the Crocker drawing and, given the similarities in facial structure and coiffure, may represent the same model. This would make sense, as the expense for female models was prohibitive, at up to twelve livres, nearly 250 current US dollars, per hour.5 The first drawing shows a young woman seen from behind climbing onto a bed or platform. The face is partly hidden behind the arm and the pose somewhat awkward. In the second, a young woman seated on a bed or platform casts her gaze downward, the crossed legs and angles of body and head lending interest to the composition. The Crocker drawing is different from the rest of Lagrenée’s compositions for Bonnet’s series. The pose is graceful, with an unbroken curve extending through the body to the profile head. Lighting from the upper right subtly plays across the rounded curves of the back, highlighting its muscles and dimples. Focused on the beguiling composition, the drawing has an otherworldly quality, created in various ways. The body’s support points are ambiguous or made to look so, the props are not shown as fully, and the absence of a floor line makes the space ambiguous as well. The most evident prop, the drapery, is animated and the shading around and beneath it unbroken, as if drape and figure are floating in space. The cataloguer of Bonnet’s print after the drawing inadvertently accents this quality, reading the figure as emerging from a body of water.6 Professors at the Académie royale most often set their male models in poses that were useful for history painting, as emphasized in recent scholarship.7 Among Lagrenée’s composition for the print series, this is perhaps the one best adapted for a narrative composition, whether water nymph or goddess. 7
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78 20.1 The Temple of Diana at Baia
79 Known as Robert des Ruines for his fascination with the ancient world, Hubert Robert (French, 1733–1808) specialized in atmospheric depictions of real or imagined monuments. These two drawings, acquired at different times, represent each type, joining a third from the artist’s time as curator of the Musée National to show the variety of his production. Robert’s father was chamberlain to the Marquis de Stainville. Born in Paris in 1733, the artist studied first at the Collège de Navarre before being apprenticed to the sculptor Michel-Ange Slodtz, making him one of the few artists of his time with a solid Classical education. In 1754, the Comte de Stainville, son of the Marquis, was appointed France’s ambassador to Rome and brought Robert with him. He interceded with the director of the Académie de France à Rome, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and the director of the Bâtiments du Roi, the Marquis de Marigny, to obtain their permission for Robert to study at the Académie without having won the Prix de Rome.1 As the Duc de Choiseul, Stainville would be Robert’s major protector, along with the Bailli de Breteuil, French ambassador to the Order of Malta, who arrived in the city in 1758. Natoire and the Marquis were impressed by Robert’s industriousness. Marigny advised Natoire to elevate him as an example to other students; in terms of style, however, though he praised it as Panini-like, the two continually criticized the young artist for inaccuracy in depicting ancient buildings and inscriptions.2 The Temple of Diana at Baia Inscriptions red chalk, lower left: Roberti; red chalk, lower right: Tempio di diana; red chalk, lower right corner: 1760 Marks none Provenance Beaussant-Lefevre at Drouot, 15 April 2005, lot 44; BeaussantLefevre at Drouot, 10 June 2009, lot 77; Koller, Zürich, 26 March 2010, lot 3433; Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 639; Museum purchase Literature Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 639; Koller, Zürich, 26 March 2010, lot 3433; BeaussantLefevre at Drouot, 10 June 2009, lot 77; Beaussant-Lefevre at Drouot, 15 April 2005, lot 44 20.1, 20.2 Hubert Robert The Temple of Diana at Baia, 1760 Red chalk on cream laid paper, 33 x 45.8 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 2011.12 The Bridge, 1773 Pen and black ink, brush and watercolor over black chalk on cream laid paper, 41.9 x 53.3 cm. Crocker Art Museum, bequest of Mary de Limur Weinmann, 2019.145.26
80 20.2 The Bridge
81 In late 1759, the Abbé de Saint-Non, something of a refugee from political and religious turmoil involving the Parlement de Paris, arrived in Rome. Over the next two years he explored southern Italy with Robert and with Jean-Honoré Fragonard, already in Rome at the Académie since 1756. After the Abbé’s departure for Paris with Fragonard, the Bailli de Breteuil supported Robert’s continued presence in the city and his travels within the Italian peninsula. Robert returned to Paris in 1765 and was immediately reçu at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. This began a long and productive period in which he popularized his specific brand of Classicizing painting and enjoyed great renown through publication of his compositions in prints, especially those included in the Abbé’s Voyage pittoresque, ou Description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile of 1781–1786. In the late 1770s he received government positions, helped to organize the Musée Royal at the Louvre, where he was also given apartments, and became Dessinateur des jardins du Roi. His continuing involvement in the Louvre museum was supplemented by positions in the Académie royal in the following decade. After the revolution of 1789, he kept his Louvre position during its transformation into the Musée National, serving until 1797, though interrupted by imprisonment under Robespierre. Later, in 1802, he was dismissed and four years later lost his Louvre lodgings. Robert died of a stroke in 1808. “The Abbé de Saint-Non has just arrived from Naples with M. Robert. I have just glanced at the studies he made in that country, which please me greatly. [M. l’Abbé de Saint-Non vient d’arriver de Naples avec le Sr. Robert. Le coup d’oeil que je viens de donner sur les études qu’il a faites dans ce pays me font grand plaisir.]”3 Natoire describes the result of Robert’s experience of Naples and its environs, a trip that began April 17 and ended June 3, 1760. It was not without incident: Robert was arrested April 24 for drawing the city’s fortifications without permission, and only the Abbé having himself jailed as security allowed Robert to see the French ambassador to sort it out.4 Robert’s Naples drawings are part of an exchange, it seems, his contribution to the Abbé in return for lodging and travel expenses. At least ten drawings are known to survive from their trip together, as well as a counterproof for which no original has been located. Aside from a copy after Luca Giordano’s Money-changers in the Temple, all are architectural.5 A view of the Palazzo Donn’Anna is the only one of a building in Naples; two are views near Posilippo, two are of Pozzuoli, two of Paestum, and three, including the Crocker’s, of Baia. Prints also record the “Tomb of Virgil” near Naples, an allegorical vignette with a cornucopia, a vignette of the digs at Herculaneum, the “Grotta del Cane” near Lake Avernus, another Baia view of the “Bagno di Tritoli,” and a roadside view in Salerno. The first Baia view, of the “Tempio di Venere,” is a watercolor, but the second, of the “Tempio di Mercurio,” is in red chalk.6 With plants growing from its walls, it is shown with figures being carried piggyback across the flooded floor. The shading and contours are similar to the Crocker drawing, but there are significant differences in the latter. The Crocker drawing is of the “Tempio di Diana,” now known to have been dedicated to Venus. Praised by Saint-Non for its importance and picturesqueness, the monument The Bridge Inscriptions none Marks none Provenance Mrs. William H. Crocker, by 1934; Christie’s, New York, by 2005; Mary de Limur Weinmann; bequest to the Museum Literature Unpublished
82 has a somewhat different aspect today, as the lower level has been excavated further than in Robert’s time, and it is no longer a rural site.7 Consistent with his interest in atmosphere rather than accuracy, Robert takes liberties he has not allowed himself with the “Tempio di Mercurio:” the lone figure striding towards the monument and his companions already there are shrunk to tiny size so that the temple looms above them, a land mass is added at left, and the “Tempio di Mercurio” is moved from its normal location to make an appearance in the right-hand distance, along with an aqueduct. The print by Heinrich Guttenberg shows better the umbrella pines added above these buildings to balance the composition. Though these contextual details have been changed, the depiction of the monument itself is remarkably accurate. “What I have seen so far of his paintings is far inferior to his drawings, which are very spirited. Everyone asks him for them, especially those that are lightly colored. [Ce que j’ai vu jusqu’à présent de ses tableaux est fort inférieur à ses dessins, dans lesquels il met beaucoup d’esprit. Chacun lui en demande, surtout de ceux qu’il fait légèrement colorés.]”8 Pierre-Jean Mariette’s account of the popularity of Robert’s watercolors points to a different context for the Crocker Bridge from the Tempio di Diana just discussed, and a different period in his career. Now back in Paris and importuned by collectors, Robert is no longer the young artist discovering Italy and its Classical buildings for the first time. Relying on his knowledge and his drawings of Roman ruins, he becomes freer in his compositions. In Paris, moreover, the artistic world is different, with different expectations: as Renaud Serrette and Gabriel Wick point out, the importance of invention in the fig. 19. Hubert Robert, Ruined Bridge with Figures Crossing La Passerelle, 1767. Oil on canvas, 47 x 66 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of William B. Dietrich in loving memory of his brother, H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., inv. no. 2010-146-1
83 hierarchy of arts encouraged this kind of visual experimentation, and the genre of imaginative ruins, whether known monuments recombined inventively or pure capricci, was given its own poetics.9 Trained by Giovanni Paolo Panini, and seemingly unaffected by the archaeologizing current that ended in Neoclassicism, Robert remains an artist of the picturesque. This is true of the present watercolor. The piers of an ancient, ruined bridge serve as the departure point for a charming, Italianizing riverbank scene. A footbridge, complete with fishing nets and a winch, connects the piers, one decorated with a niche and the other with a small tower. In the foreground, a woman with a bundle descends at left towards an inquisitive goat, who looks at a rustic sheepherding family and their flock. At right, fishermen in a boat haul in their traps and nets, leading the eye to a deep landscape, complete with castle and island, beyond. Though of course Robert would have known many ancient bridges from his time in Italy, his sources for them also included prints such as Piranesi’s Carceri, as pointed out by Nina Dubin.10 Whatever his source, Robert’s bridge also appears in a painting now in Philadelphia. (fig. 19)11 Dated 1767, six years before the watercolor, it is remarkable for the invention and variété it brings to the same composition. Though lacking the stairs, the left foreground, inhabited by different figures and animals, is illuminated the same way. Other points of visual interest are similarly related: the fishermen are replaced by boulders emerging from the river, the prominent trees on the island by a bridge, and the distant castle by a cliff of the same shape. Beyond these similarities, the river landscape framed by the piers is rather different. Above, the tower has disappeared and the footbridge, propped from below, includes different figures. The relationship between the Crocker watercolor and the Philadelphia painting illuminate Robert’s mature working process: in his capricci he often combines or recombines monuments to create a new composition, as one would expect, but here he begins with the same basic composition and lighting system, and then varies landscape elements, buildings, and staffage. The two Crocker drawings, one by a young Robert who depicts a famous ancient monument surrounded by a pleasing—though inaccurate— composition and the other a mature artist’s capriccio on a theme he reused, would have pleased both Robert’s colleagues at the Académie and his well-informed patrons in their display of his capacity for invention. 7
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85 With its unusual point of view that creates difficult foreshortening for the head and shoulders, Gaetano Gandolfi’s drawing of a male figure raises questions around its possible purpose and the context in which it was made. Its compelling quality is a tribute to the artist’s deep knowledge of the human body. Born in San Matteo della Decima, ten miles from Bologna, Gaetano (Italian, 1734–1802) is recorded living in the city in 1748 along with his brother Ubaldo, also an artist, in the household of a third brother, Rinaldo. Fourteen at the time, Gaetano began study three years later at the Accademia Clementina where he was taught by Felice Torelli, Ercole Lelli, and Ercole Graziano. By 1752 he was part of the household of the patron Nicolò Tanari, where he remained until 1760. His talent for drawing earned him many prizes at the Accademia, as well as a commission from the Prince of Wales’s librarian, Richard Dalton, a relationship that continued in following years. A long trip to Venice in 1760, sponsored by another patron, Antonio Buratti, brought a distinct change in style, best visible in his religious paintings of the period. Admitted to the Accademia Clementina as a member in 1764, he became direttore di figura in charge of life drawing the next year. Never the head, or principe, he held many different offices in the organization until his death. The 1770s brought major religious and secular commissions including the 1776 Marriage at Cana for San Salvatore, the 1779 cupola with the Assumption for Santa Maria della Vita, and frescoes for various Bolognese palaces. As his career progressed, the artist confronted the contemporary Neoclassical current in various ways. In the 1780s this was perhaps more about the subjects of his paintings, which were increasingly scenes from ancient history. Travel associated with the 1787 invitation to Inscriptions verso, brown ink, lower left: Gaetano Gandolfi fecit Marks none Provenance Jean-Luc Baroni, by 2012; gift of Alan Templeton Literature unpublished 21 Gaetano Gandolfi Male Nude Seated Among Rocks, n.d. Black and white chalks on buff laid paper, 17 9/16 x 12 1/2 in. (44.6 x 31.8 cm.) Crocker Art Museum, gift of Alan Templeton, 2012.126
86 London by his early patron Dalton, now librarian to the King, brought him knowledge of different European manifestations of Neoclassicism, and provoked a second change in style, for example in the Inauguration of the Foundling Hospital painted for Pisa Cathedral. Four paintings of the 1790s exemplify his personal take on Neoclassical style in scenes of Campaspe, Tullia, Hector and the Sabines. The artist died suddenly in 1802. Gaetano was consistently active in life drawing throughout his career, and the fact that relatively few of the resulting nudes can be connected directly to works in oil or fresco means they can be difficult to date. As direttore di figura at the Accademia Clementina he would have been responsible for setting poses, and his drawings and paintings show his imaginative grace in fitting these to a narrative. Telling stories through the human body was of course the entire point of life drawing in this context, and the pose in the Crocker drawing would be useful for several episodes: the Resurrection, the Transfiguration, and the Conversion of Paul, as well as some secular scenes that might well involve a figure covering their face while turning away from an event or a source of light. The complexity of the figure reflects Gaetano’s mastery of the balletic pose, evident for example in the Liberation of Saint Peter in New Haven,1 which includes the figure of a soldier in virtuosic foreshortening to a similar degree as in the present drawing. Likewise, a Resurrection in Bologna2 is populated by figures reacting to the central event, the rhythmic sequence of gracefully contorted poses surrounding the diagonal upward swoop of Christ’s body. Many of the poses are extreme, and the angel and soldier at right are covering their faces, hands upraised, in ways analogous to the Crocker figure. However, a direct comparison for the Crocker drawing is unlikely among the artist’s paintings. Like most of Gaetano’s life drawings, it seems to be an exercise in thought rather than being preparatory. It seems to have been created in the life drawing room, with the professor’s pose involving the usual supporting pedestals or crates, here transformed by the artist into rocks. The two-hour length of usual posing sessions means it would have been extremely difficult to keep the hand upraised for the required time—likely it was originally closed around a rope, an additional support used by models. The challenging pose in the Crocker drawing, with its lost arm and face in addition to the difficult overlap on the far leg, is one that would remain interesting, and more achievable for lesser artists than Gaetano himself, from other angles. If the life drawing theater of the Accademia Clementina were as highly regulated as that at the French Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture,3 this difficult point of view would have been available only to the less successful students. The higher-ranking ones, as determined by the previous month’s results in life drawing class, would have chosen the better seats already. In these exercises, the professors drew alongside their students before wandering among them to correct their work. In his capacity as direttore di figura at the Accademia Clementina, one can imagine Gandolfi setting the month’s pose and drawing it from this unusual angle to prove to his students it could be done, or to encourage the stragglers. Or perhaps instead it is a pose he set in his private studio or in another place altogether, to exercise his inventive faculty for the narrative figures mentioned above. Whatever its origin, the Crocker drawing remains a tour-de-force of foreshortening and implied anatomy. 7
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89 One of Jean-Baptiste Le Prince’s Russian subjects, this drawing is likely a capriccio based on the artist’s time there rather than a document of his journey. ¶ Born to an artisan family, Le Prince (French, 1734–1781) spent his early life in Metz. The city’s governor, the Maréchal de Belle-Isle, became the young artist’s patron, securing him an apprenticeship with François Boucher in 1750. After a brief and unhappy marriage, Le Prince may have taken a trip to Italy in 1754, though his work shows little evidence of it. He went to Saint Petersburg in 1757 and remained there until 1762. This was a moment of frequent and productive contact between the two cultures, and the new Russian art academy was staffed with Frenchmen: its first director Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain was soon followed in 1760 by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, the drawing professor Moreau le Jeune, and the sculpture professor Nicolas Gillet. The latter was from Metz and likely recommended by the Maréchal, as was Le Prince. The artist had family connections in Saint Petersburg as well, since his brother already worked for the Imperial court and his sister was the wife of a language professor there.1 A string of Imperial commissions included a series of forty overdoors for the new Winter Palace. While in Russia Le Prince traveled through the countryside—though he illustrated the Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche’s Voyage en Sibérie they did not travel together and he likely stayed in Russia’s west. The tumultuous year of 1762, which saw three different Russian rulers in the space of seven months, was surely a factor in Le Prince’s return to Paris. Once back in France, Le Prince concentrated on Russian subjects based on his experience and drawings made there, single-handedly creating a vogue for russeries. These included his reception piece for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1765, and every painting he sent to the Inscriptions none Marks none Provenance Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 1969, lot 50; Private Northeastern collection; Swann, Boston, 25 January 2001, lot 129; L’Antiquaire & the Connoisseur, New York, by 2005; Museum purchase Literature Helen Costantino Fioratti, ed., The Masterful Hand, European Drawings from the 15th through the early 20th century, L’Antiquaire & the Connoisseur, New York, 2005, no. 88; Swann, Boston, 25 January 2001, lot 129; Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 1969, lot 50 22 Jean-Baptiste Le Prince Eastern Figures beside a Waterfall, n.d. Brush and black ink and gray washes, graphite on cream laid paper prepared with gesso, incised, 21.9 x 17.8 cm. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 2012.129
90 Salon over the next few years. The vogue he created was such that it soon extended to the decorative arts, including tapestries made to his designs at Beauvais. Le Prince did work on other subjects as well, especially after 1770, and around 1775 russeries dropped out of his work altogether. Much of this later work, often landscapes, was related to his printmaking career. The popularizer of aquatint in France, Le Prince employed it as a method for reproducing ink and wash drawings, supplying a ready market. Ill health plagued the artist in later years, forcing his move to the countryside, where he died in 1781. The present drawing, extremely detailed for its size, is created in an unusual technique. Having covered a sheet of cream laid paper with a thick layer of gesso, Le Prince created the landscape view and its figures in monochrome ink and wash. Then, using a knife or scalpel, he scratched through the design to create white highlights. This is most evident in the various leaves and the spray from the waterfall. Le Prince has imagined a dramatic cliff-bound setting, a waterfall hemmed in by brush-covered boulders leading down to a grassy ledge. The falls are rather dramatic, with two major cascades and a minor one below. A man on horseback is silhouetted against the sky at its top, along with two figures against the falls at center. A footbridge connects two groups of figures on the foreground ledge, a standing man with two women, their baskets and perhaps food, opposite a woman and her companion spinning wool outside a brick house built into the hill. The surroundings are not typical for where Le Prince is known to have traveled, most of western Russia being a plain; the mountainous Urals and the Caucasus are far east and south from Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Le Prince’s death inventory included twelve notebooks of Russian sketches and Russian costumes as well. According to Kimerly Rorschach, the artist also had models of Russian buildings, wagons, sleighs, and tools made once he had returned to France.2 In making the illustrations for the Voyage en Sibérie between 1764 and 1768, he employed the Abbé’s collection of Russian artifacts as well. That body of work, which explicates the Abbé’s rather detailed text, is focused on small groups of figures and their immediate surroundings, as are most of Le Prince’s prints and paintings. Few are as focused on the drama of land and water as this composition. The figures’ similarities to others by Le Prince raise the possibility that they originate in common models, perhaps sketches in the notebooks mentioned above or even sketches of models wearing his collection of Russian costumes. For example, the standing figure with the staff is clothed the same as the Juif polonais from his Habillements de diverses nations of 1765, and the woman seated at left reflects the Femme des environs de Moscou from his Divers habillemens des femmes de Moscovie of the year before. For costumes alone, the seated women’s clothing is that of the Femmes du peuple revenant du marché in his Première suite des cris et divers marchands de Petersbourg et de Moscou of 1765. Given Le Prince’s immersion in Russian culture throughout his early career, the relationships may not be so direct, however, nor should the date of the drawing be restricted to the time frame of the print series mentioned. 7
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93 I n addition to its great charm as an allegory of Evening, this scene of a herder and his flocks is significant for its provenance in the Crocker family. Once the property of the Museum founder E. B. Crocker’s nephew, William H. Crocker, and his wife, it bears the alternate title The Return Home, especially appropriate since it has come back to California from its travels in New York and Paris. Jean-Baptiste Hüet (French, 1745–1812) was the scion of an artistic family—both his father Nicolas and his uncle Christophe were painters, and his son Nicolas the Younger entered the profession as well. Once trained by his father, Hüet was apprenticed to the animal painter Charles Dagomer, though further work with Antoine Renou and JeanBaptiste-Marie Pierre has also been proposed.1 What is certain is that in 1764 he entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, who had just returned from Russia. Master and pupil retained a close relationship as both their careers advanced further, Le Prince serving as godfather to at least one of Hüet’s children. The artist was agréé to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1768, and reçu the next year with the painting Dogs Attacking Geese. 2 Though admitted as an animal painter, Hüet had ambitions to become a history painter, but his efforts did not meet with critical success and he accepted his fate by around 1780. As an animal painter, on the other hand, he enjoyed great renown, partly on the basis of his frequent participation in the Salon but also because of the many prints done after his work that spread to a wider public. Royal favor took the form of a commission of two paintings in 1770, the same year he was 23 Jean-Baptiste Hüet (French, 1745–1812) Le Soir, 1790 Pen and black ink, brush and gray and reddish-brown washes, black, red, and white chalks on cream laid paper, 9 1/2 x 13 1/8 in. (24.4 x 33.3 cm.) Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Anne and Malcolm McHenry, Joan and Jason Leineke, and Irma C. Moore, 2016.52 Inscriptions signed and dated in red chalk, strengthened in dark brown ink, lower right corner: J. B. hüet 1790. Marks Lugt 421 (Beurdeley) lower left corner Provenance Van Haren (‘Nera’) collection, by 1776; possibly Louis-Martin Bonnet, his sale, RegnaultDelalande, Paris, 7 November 1793, lot 38; Alfred Beurdeley, his sale, Georges Petit, Paris, 13 March 1905, lot 105; William H. Crocker; Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2000, lot 102; Jean-Luc Baroni and Marty de Cambiaire; Museum purchase Literature Marty de Cambiaire, Tableaux et dessins, Paris, 2016, no. 26; Benjamin Couilleaux, Jean-Baptiste Huet, le plaisir de la nature, exh. cat. Paris, 2015, p. 82; Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2000, lot 102; Georges Petit, Paris, 13 March 1905, lot 105; Cyrille Gabillot, Les Huet, Jean-Baptiste et ses trois fils, Paris, 1892, p. 16; Regnault-Delalande, Paris, 7 November 1793, lot 38
94 granted apartments in the Louvre and, in 1773, two overdoors for Louis XV’s dining room at Versailles. Also, with François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, he decorated the house of his most frequent printmaker, Gilles Demarteau.3 In the 1780s, in addition to his other work, he began supplying designs for the manufactories in Beauvais and Jouÿ. Hüet survived the turmoil of the 1789 revolution politically, but it marked the beginning of a change in taste that affected his artistic career. Diderot, an enemy of the Rococo, was the first to describe him as another, even more frivolous Boucher.4 As Neoclassicism became more popular, this assessment of Hüet became the standard view. Still wealthy and important enough in 1794 to serve as mayor of Villiers-sur-Orge where his family estate was located, by 1807 the artist was forced to sell it to relieve his finances. Hüet died in 1811 and was soon forgotten until his work was reassessed late in the century. The Crocker drawing is one of four Times of Day engraved by Demarteau in 1776. Paintings of the same subjects were shown at the Salon in 1773, but have been lost.5 Demarteau’s legends to the engravings list Le matin, Le midi, and L’après-midi as ‘Du cabinet de M. Nera’ and Le Soir, the present drawing, as ‘Du porte-feuille de M. Nera,’ indicating perhaps that the first three paintings and the Crocker drawing, but not its related painting, were in the possession of the collector at that time. According to Marty de Cambiaire, “M. Nera,” who amassed a number of Hüet’s works, was actually female, daughter of the Dutch poet van Haren.6 This would be Willem van Haren, whose daughter Wilhelmina Frederika is the likely collector given her birthdate, the French ‘Nera’ being a phonetic anagram of ‘Haren.’ Whether or not this is the case, two drawings directly related to Demarteau’s prints survive, the present drawing and a watercolor of Le matin offered from the Gallice collection in Paris in 1954.7 In his exhibition catalogue of 2015, Benjamin Couilleaux refers to the two as ’répétitions dessinées tardives’ of the prints. Cambiaire, writing at the same time, also proposes the Crocker drawing as a later replica of the 1776 print, adding further that its reversal of the composition makes certain that it is not preparatory.8 The logic behind the idea of later repetitions of Demarteau’s engravings rests on the date of the Crocker drawing, which reads 1790, the ex-Gallice drawing being undated. However, the idea raises the question of why Hüet would have returned after many years not to his own composition but rather to the printed version, created the Crocker and ex-Gallice drawings in different media, and reversed the composition in one case but not the other. A clue to the matter is provided by close examination of the present sheet under black light, following a notation by Jean-Luc Baroni that the signature and date are reinforced.9 Under ultraviolet, it becomes clear that the signature and date ‘J. B. hüet 1790.’ cover a previous inscription in black or red chalk. While the strokes of the ink signature follow the earlier inscription closely, the date, followed less exactly in the 9 and the 0, shows a diagonal stroke rising to the right above the last digit. This would mean the chalk inscription’s last digit may have been a 6, with the original date possibly being 1776 consistent with a drawing made for Demarteau’s print of the same year. Taking into account that, at least to this author, the left-to-right reversal makes it more likely, not less,
95 that the drawing served as preparatory, it seems the relationship between the two may possibly be more straightforward than previously thought. Such a hypothesis does not explain the ex-Gallice drawing which, being watercolor and without reversal, is likely a different case altogether. The Crocker drawing, owned by the Museum founder’s nephew William H. Crocker and his wife Ethel, née Sperry, bears an associated loan label from 1935. The collection focused on eighteenth-century drawings, especially French. It was exhibited in 1937 at the newly founded San Francisco Museum of Art (later SFMOMA), after the death of Mrs. Crocker in 1934, and may have been on loan since shortly after her death given William H.’s deep involvement in setting up the institution. It is not quite certain that the drawing was part of the exhibition, as the checklist is missing from SFMOMA archives. After William H.’s own death in 1937, the collection was partly dispersed at auction, where this drawing began its travels again. 7
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97 Created towards the end of his life, this drawing by Giuseppe Cades shows the artist’s inspired facility with narrative and his typical, wiry pen technique. ¶ Cades (Italian, 1750–1799) was born in Rome to a French father and an Italian mother. Working in the atelier of Domenico Corvi by 1766, he was dismissed, perhaps for insubordination in an admittedly strict environment.1 An enthusiastic draughtsman who had already won prizes at the Accademia di San Luca by this date, he gained the support of patrons who enabled him to study in Florence in 1771. Though a productive artist, Cades was not admitted as a member of the Virtuosi al Pantheon or the Accademia di San Luca until 1786, perhaps blackballed by Corvi until then. Much of his work in his early career was religious, but especially after his admission to the Accademia di San Luca he gained commissions for narrative fresco cycles in the most prestigious Roman palaces, including the Palazzo Borghese at the Porta Pinciana and the Palazzo Altieri, as well as the Palazzo Chigi at Ariccia outside the city. A judge for the Concorsi Clementini drawing competitions in 1792, he also served as director of the Accademia del Nudo in following years. In the period before his death in 1799 he returned to religious subjects. Like Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich in Germany, Cades’s unusual facility in drawing caused damage to his reputation. He suffered at the hands of his early biographer Lanzi, who objected to his ability to work in different styles, and who related an anecdote about one of his drawings in the manner of Raphael. It was supposedly sold as an original to the director of the Dresden Kunstakademie, Giovanni Battista Casanova, for 500 zecchini.2 Though he was careful to note that Cades knew nothing of the sale, the episode colored assessments of the artist for many years. One wonders though whether Casanova, Inscriptions dark brown ink, lower left corner: Cades. 1794 Marks none Provenance sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 3 October 2000, lot 39; Jean-Luc Baroni; gift to the Museum Literature Unpublished 24 Giuseppe Cades Juno Discovers Jupiter with Io, 1794 Pen and black ink, brush and brown wash over black chalk, 28.8 x 37.7 cm. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Alan Templeton, 2012.7
98 after all trained by Dietrich, who imitated others’ manners himself, might have paid such an amount for the drawing as a tribute to Cades’s skill in working in Raphael’s manner instead of being duped. In any case, after a long period of relative neglect, Cades’s drawings were rediscovered by modern scholars in the 1960s, resulting in an article by Anthony Morris Clark.3 Juno Discovers Jupiter with Io is created with fine, uniform contours in black, reflecting the artist’s great skill with the pen. The sure touch in the figures is an exercise in virtuosity—only in the wooded background does Cades double his contours, even there perhaps for emphasis. His application of wash is similarly skilled, the absence of tide lines in certain areas indicating that he wet the paper to smooth the transition from dark to light. The tale is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Jupiter had pursued the river nymph Io, leading her into the woods and, taking the form of a cloud, ravished her. Juno, seeing dark clouds at midday, rides down on a cloud of her own to investigate. Alerted to her arrival, Jupiter transforms Io into a beautiful milk-white heifer just in time, creating an innocent pastoral for his goddess spouse’s arrival. Not at all deceived, Juno asks for the heifer as a gift, which Jupiter cannot deny without revealing the ruse. Leading her away, Juno places her under the guard of hundredeyed Argus. Cades chooses to depict the moment of greatest drama when Juno swoops in to confront her husband. Her light cloud at right contrasts with the dark forest, recently darkened further by cloud-bound Jupiter. Against this background a rhythmic ballet of pose, gesture, and glance elaborates the tale: Jupiter reaches protectively towards the transformed Io and guilelessly points her out to his wife; Juno with arms outstretched arrives in fury as she meets his innocent gaze; Io gazes almost coyly at Jupiter’s eagle who returns the attention. Dated 1794, the Crocker drawing is close in time to the Marriage of Alexander and Roxane, known in two versions dated 1793 in Rome and Paris,4 and to the Tarquin and Lucretia in Copenhagen dated 1795.5 Of these, perhaps the closest in graphic style is the Paris version of Alexander and Roxane. The Crocker drawing seems to be somewhat of an anomaly in the early 1790s, being a mythological subject among scenes from ancient history, as well as lacking the clear inspiration from works by other artists (Sodoma and Titian) in the two subjects mentioned. In addition, there is no known connection to a painting by Cades himself, not unexpectedly as by this time the artist habitually sold drawings as finished works of art to supplement his income.6 fig. 20. Giuseppe Cades, Rinaldo and Armida, n.d. Red chalk on cream laid paper, 19.5 x 15.2 cm. Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection, inv. no. 1871.347
99 Perhaps more fertile ground for comparison lies earlier, in Cades’s literary subjects of the 1780s. The drawings for the Ariosto room at the Palazzo Chigi at Ariccia, now preserved in Budapest, share the same legibility, the same sense of drama, and the same perceptive choices of narrative moment.7 This is also true of the Crocker’s other drawing by Cades, of a similar epic inspiration but this time from Tasso, dated to the same period as the Budapest drawings. (fig. 20)8 With Juno Discovers Jupiter with Io, the Crocker now represents two different aspects of Cades’s secular narrative work, in very different periods, styles, and media. 7
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