$3,300.00
François Lemoyne, 1688 to 1737
France
18th century
Chalk on cream laid paper
Sheet 13 x 9 inches (33 x 22.9 cm), frame 18 x 15 1/4 inches (45.7 x 38.7 cm)
Signed lower right
Provenance: Swann Galleries, Old Master Drawings, 29 January 2013, lot 176; Bloom Fine Art and Antiques, New York
The sheet is covered edge to edge with compositional studies worked at different scales and angles, so that a crowd of standing and kneeling figures in the lower half runs up against a separate group of seated figures in cloud at the upper right. The handling is rapid and searching, the contours restated several times where the artist was still deciding a pose, and whole passages are left as loose scaffolding while a few heads and hands are carried much further. Nothing on the sheet is finished, which is what makes it legible as working material rather than as a presentation drawing.
The sheet is drawn on both sides and is presented in a double sided frame so that recto and verso can each be seen. The reverse carries further figure groups in the same manner, laid down without regard to the orientation of the first side. The sheet is signed at the lower right.
François Lemoyne was born in Paris in 1688 and died there in 1737. He trained under Louis Galloche and was received into the Académie Royale in 1718. His major work is the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles, completed in 1736, after which he was appointed Premier Peintre du Roi to Louis XV. He taught both François Boucher and Charles Joseph Natoire, and his drawings are typically sheets of rapid figure studies in chalk of the kind seen here.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
$3,300.00
François Lemoyne, 1688 to 1737
France
18th century
Chalk on cream laid paper
Sheet 13 x 9 inches (33 x 22.9 cm), frame 18 x 15 1/4 inches (45.7 x 38.7 cm)
Signed lower right
Provenance: Swann Galleries, Old Master Drawings, 29 January 2013, lot 176; Bloom Fine Art and Antiques, New York
The sheet is covered edge to edge with compositional studies worked at different scales and angles, so that a crowd of standing and kneeling figures in the lower half runs up against a separate group of seated figures in cloud at the upper right. The handling is rapid and searching, the contours restated several times where the artist was still deciding a pose, and whole passages are left as loose scaffolding while a few heads and hands are carried much further. Nothing on the sheet is finished, which is what makes it legible as working material rather than as a presentation drawing.
The sheet is drawn on both sides and is presented in a double sided frame so that recto and verso can each be seen. The reverse carries further figure groups in the same manner, laid down without regard to the orientation of the first side. The sheet is signed at the lower right.
François Lemoyne was born in Paris in 1688 and died there in 1737. He trained under Louis Galloche and was received into the Académie Royale in 1718. His major work is the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles, completed in 1736, after which he was appointed Premier Peintre du Roi to Louis XV. He taught both François Boucher and Charles Joseph Natoire, and his drawings are typically sheets of rapid figure studies in chalk of the kind seen here.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
