The interior of a baroque palace with elegant company conversing by fountains

Details

Jacques de Lajoüe (Paris 1686-1761)
The interior of a baroque palace with elegant company conversing by fountains
signed 'Lajoüe' (lower centre)
oil on canvas
31 7/8 x 39 in. (81 x 99 cm.)

Provenance

(Possibly) Baron Papeleu de Poelwoorde; sale, Oudart, Paris, 22 February 1875, lot 32, 'Riche colonnade de palais donnant sur un parc'.
Baron André Descamps, Brussels.
with Cailleux, Paris, where acquired by the present owner.

Literature

Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, 1925, II, p. 205, illustrated.
M. Roland-Michel, 'L'ornement rocaille: quelques questions', Revue de l'Art, 55, 1982, pp. 66-75, illustrated.
M. Roland-Michel, Lajoüe et l'Art Rocaille, Paris, 1984, p. 224, no. P198, pl. 6 and fig. 170.

Exhibited

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Arts français du XVIIIème siècle, 1925.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Marianne Roland-Michel dates this picture to 1736-7. The fountain and river God, to the left, are similar to those in a River landscape with a pyramidal fountain (Louvre, Paris; Roland-Michel, op. cit., 1984, no. P162, fig. 153) and to an engraving in Lajoüe's fourth Livre d'Architecture Paisages et Perspectives. A similar sculpture of a nymph holding a vase appears in an Elegant company resting by a baroque fountain (location unknown; ibid., no. P98, fig. 110) and in the Geography (location unknown, known from an engraving by Ingram; ibid., no. P19, fig. 53). Two of the three couples derive from a Bal Champêtre by Watteau, whilst the depiction on the ceiling of Hercules slaying Cacus belongs to a picture by François Le Moyne (Paris, Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts).
The composition relates to a drawing attributed to Lajoüe in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

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