JACQUES BERTAUX (ARCIS-SUR-AUBE VERS 1745-1818 ?)

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€ 138 600
Auction dateClassic
22.11.2022 16:00UTC +02:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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ID 859331
Lot 26 | JACQUES BERTAUX (ARCIS-SUR-AUBE VERS 1745-1818 ?)
JACQUES BERTAUX (ARCIS-SUR-AUBE VERS 1745-1818 ?)

La chasse du duc Louis-Philippe d'Orléans ou le Rapport

signé et daté 'Bertaux. 1773.' (en bas, vers le centre)

huile sur toile, dans son cadre d'origine

130,8 x 196 cm. (51 1/2 x 77 1/8 in.)





Provenance

Commandé par Louis-Philippe Ier d'Orléans (1725-1785), probablement pour le château de Saint-Cloud ; puis par descendance à son fils, Louis-Philippe II d'Orléans (1747-1793), 'Philippe Égalité' ; puis par descendance à son fils, Louis-Philippe III d'Orléans (1773-1850), roi des Français ; puis par descendance à son fils, Antoine-Marie-Philippe d'Orléans (1824-1890), duc de Montpensier, Infant d'Espagne ; puis par descendance dans une collection particulière, France, jusque 1981.

Vente anonyme, hôtel Drouot, Paris, (Mes Couturier & Nicolaÿ), 19 novembre 1981, lot 179.

Collection particulière, Suisse.

Stair Sainty Matthiesen, New York, 1986.

Vente anonyme, Christie's, Londres, 20 mai 2010, lot 81 ; d'où acquis par l'actuel propriétaire.



Literature

Burlington Magazine, juin 1985 (selon une note à la Documentation des peintures du Louvre).

Stair Sainty Matthiesen, An aspect of collecting taste, cat. exp., New York, 1986, p. 39, n°13, reproduit en couleurs p. 40, fig. 13.



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Post lot text

HUNTING WITH THE DUC LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS OR THE SCENT, OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED AND DATED, IN ITS ORIGINAL FRAME

In 1733, Jean-Baptiste Oudry was entrusted with the most ambitious project of his career: the production of the preparatory cartoons for the weaving of the Royal Hunts tapestries commissioned by King Louis XV. The nine painted cartoons on canvas that make up this set depict the various episodes of the royal hunt, during which Oudry was allowed to follow the king. Louis XV and the main actors of the royal hunting party – the grand veneur or the premier écuyer – are depicted in topographically exact locations in the royal forests of Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau or Compiègne. The castles of Fontainebleau and Compiègne now respectively hold the cartoons and tapestries from this commission (ill. 1).

Almost half a century later, the Duke Louis-Philippe of Orléans (ill. 2) followed up on this royal hunting set by commissioning Jacques Bertaux to produce four paintings representing the different stages of a hunting party: the Rapport, the Bien aller, the Hallali and the Curée. The ensemble was probably commissioned for the Château de Saint-Cloud, owned by the Orléans family since its purchase by Monsieur Philippe of Orléans in 1658. The château can be recognised in the background of the Curée, a painting which is now held in the Domaine départemental de Sceaux (inv. no. 90.25.1) (ill. 3).

Chronologically, the Bien aller, the Hallali and the Curée follow on from the Rapport, which opens the Duke of Orléans' hunting cycle: the atmosphere of the undergrowth, rendered in a range of greens and blues close to Oudry's palette, is that of the beginning of the day. Piqueux, veneurs, maîtres-chiens and squires, whose features are relatively stereotyped, are gathered around the protagonists of the scene, to whom the painter has given a certain attention to detail and accuracy of expression, enabling them to be partly identified.

Placed in the centre of the composition, the Duke of Orléans is wearing the outfit of the équipage du cerf. Guillaume-Marin du Rouïl de Boismassot, ‘gentilhomme de la vénerie du duc d’Orléans', Monsieur of Brossard, ‘écuyer commandant de l’écurie de Monsieur le duc’, and the Marquis of Barbançon, 'premier veneur de Monsieur le duc d'Orléans', of whom the Condé musem in Chantilly has drawings by Louis Carrogis de Carmontelle (inv. nos. Car44, Car51 and Car40), are probably standing around him. The influence of the work of Carmontelle, a painter, draughtsman and engraver who started working for the Duke of Orléans in 1763, is perceptible in the straight, observant but also intimate representation that Bertaux gives to the central figures, not unlike Les gentilshommes duc d'Orléans dans l'habit de Saint-Cloud (ill. 4), now in a French private collection.

It remains to identify the crew member seated at the bottom left of the composition, whose look is directed towards the viewer. Could he be Philippe II of Orléans, the future Philippe Égalité?
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