JEAN-BAPTISTE ISABEY (NANCY 1767-1855 PARIS)

Lot 86
20.03.2024 15:00UTC +01:00
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€ 47 880
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationFrance, Paris
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ID 1172966
Lot 86 | JEAN-BAPTISTE ISABEY (NANCY 1767-1855 PARIS)
Estimate value
€ 20 000 – 30 000
JEAN-BAPTISTE ISABEY (NANCY 1767-1855 PARIS)

Jeune femme au clavier

signé ‘Isabey’ (sur l’instrument)

gouache sur ivoire, rehaussé de gomme arabique

19,1 x 13,5 cm (7 ½ x 5 ¼ in.), dans son cadre original en acajou orné de quatre plaques de porcelaine Wedgwood





Provenance

Félix Doistau (1846-1936), Paris, 1912.

Galerie Pierre Bernard, Paris, rue d’Anjou, 1984 d’où acquis par

Chez Elfriede Lechner, Munich, d’où acquis par le propriétaire actuel en 1984.



Literature

P. André Lemoisne, et al. L’exposition de la miniature à Bruxelles 1912. Recueil des oeuvres les plus remarquables des miniaturistes de toutes les Écoles, du XVIe au XIXe siècle, Bruxelles, Paris, 1913, p. 80, note 1.

Max von Boehn, Miniaturen und Silhouetten, Munich, 1918, p. 86, p. 91, ill.

H. Seling, Keysers Kunst und Antiquitätenbuch, Heidelberg, 1957, I, pp. 83-84.

Weltkunst. Aktuelle Zeitschrift für Kunst und Antiquitäten, Munich, 15 octobre 1984 (4e de couverture).



Exhibited

Exposition de la Miniature, Bruxelles, 1912, n° 875 et p. 30 (‘Portrait de jeune femme à son clavecin’ collection F. Doistau).



Further details

JEAN-BAPTISTE ISABEY, A YOUNG WOMAN PLAYING A PIANO, BODYCOLOUR ON IVORY, SIGNED

During the Directoire period, Jean-Baptiste Isabey frequented the salons of Madame Tallien (see the previous lot), Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier, while also working as a designer of theatre sets. He was already painting for the court of Louis XVI, and later became painter to Empress Eugénie and later Empress Marie-Louise. During the Restoration, Louis XVIII appointed him miniature painter and drawing inspector, and designer for festivals and shows (E. Schidlof, La Miniature en Europe aux 16e, 17, 18e siècles, Graz, 1964, I, pp. 404-405).
Using his preferred support for portraits, the ivory plate, which allows a tight, stippled technique conducive to the representation of the smallest details, he worked on imperial commissions and those of the most important personalities at court. While some of his commercial portraits may have been a little hasty and monotonous, in the present miniature, great precision is the achieved. The details of the instrument, the musical score, the rendering of the fabrics (notably the blue cushion in the first white) and the skin tones of the young woman’s face and hands are remarkable. This work undoubtedly dates from the beginning of the artist’s career, as he gradually abandoned ivory in favour of vellum and paper, and here did not yet depict the young woman wearing a veil, which would later prove so successful in his portraits, notably those in black chalk and watercolour.
A major collector and donor in the early 20th century, Félix Doistau, to whom the present miniature belonged, donated 169 miniatures to the Musée du Louvre in 1909, after having lent them for an exhibition in 1906. He continued his patronage of the institution until 1929, when he was appointed vice-president of the Société des Amis du Musée du Louvre. In the Doistau collection now at the Louvre are several other miniature by Isabey, among them a portrait of Guillaume-Jean Constantin, a friend of the artist, of exceptional dimensions, close to those of the present work (inv. FR 2003; see P. Jean-Richard, Inventaire des miniatures sur ivoire conservées au cabinet des dessins. Musée du Louvre et Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 1994, no. 355, ill).
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