Charles de Wailly (1729-1798)

Design for a Monument to a General with solomonic Columns

Details
Charles de Wailly (1729-1798)
Design for a Monument to a General with solomonic Columns
signed and dated 'Dewailly.f.Ao 1756'
black chalk, pen and black ink, brown and grey wash heightened with white
485 x 365 mm.
Provenance
Ian Woodner, New York; Christie's, London, Old Master Drawings from the Woodner Collection, 2 July 1991, lot 160, illustrated (£24,200).
Literature
M. Roland-Michel, Le Dessin au XVIIIème Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 143, fig. 156.

Lot Essay

According to Bélanger, 'de Wailly was among the first to abandon the use of the ruler and the compass in order to elaborate architecture more freely with his brushes' (Bélanger, Journal de Paris, 1er Frimaire, an VII (1798), p. 261). In 1760 de Wailly was the first architect to make use of the Greek Ionic order for a Parisian mansion, the Hôtel de Voyer.
A student of Blondel and Legeay, Charles de Wailly won the first prize for architecture in 1752 and became a member of the Académie in 1762. Architect of the Château de Montmusard and the Odéon Theatre, he designed the pulpit of the Church of Saint Sulpice and during the Revolution submitted projects for a reconstruction of the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde and the Panthéon.
Drawn during the artist's stay in Rome, this sheet makes use of the columns of Bernini's baldachino at Saint Peter's, anticipating the adaptation of religious architectural motifs for a neoclassical context.

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