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Lot Essay
This is a rare example of a fruit still life by Alexandre-François Desportes, most famous for his hunting scenes, bounding hounds and still lifes of the spoils of the chase. Dating to circa 1698-1700, this delicate subject stands as a counterpoint to the visceral paintings he was executing at the time for Louis XIV at the Château de la Ménagerie in the grounds of Versailles.
Trained in the Paris studio of the Flemish artist Nicasius Bernaerts (1620–1678), himself a former pupil of the renowned seventeenth century still-life painter, Frans Snyders (1579-1657), Desportes spent much of his life working in the Flemish realist tradition. In 1699, Desportes was received into the Académie Royale as an animal painter, and shortly thereafter won the first of many royal commissions that were to span the next forty-three years. Two years later, the King commissioned for the Château de Marly six portraits of his favourite hunting dogs, which were reputedly so life-like that he could identify each dog by name. Desportes continued to work for Louis XV on his ascension to the throne as painter to the Royal Hunt and exhibited frequently at the Salon until 1742.
The plums in this painting, with the dusty bloom over the deep purple of their flesh, are a wonderful testament to Desportes’ early interest in painting from life. Even in this early stage of his career, his dexterous brushwork effortlessly captures the contrasting textures of the soft fruit, the curling leaves and the coarse-weave basket. As his son, Claude-François Desportes, explained in a lecture honouring his father after his death: ‘despite the large number of studies that he had made, and to which he had little recourse unless the natural was inaccessible, he tirelessly consulted nature on every occasion and she, in recompense, always supplied him with something new’ (‘Vie d’Alexandre-François Desportes’, lecture, 3 August 1748, Conférences de l'Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture V, Paris, 2012, p. 186). This Desportes had learnt from Bernaerts, who had encouraged his young protegé to draw directly from the world around him. Indeed, Desportes is known to have made a great many studies of animals, birds and flowers from life, of which more than 600 pencil drawings and oil sketches survive. The majority of these are held in the Sèvres archives, where they served as patterns for ceramic designs throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries.
While no study directly relating to the present work survives, a number of oil sketches of plums, apricots and peaches dating to the 1690s are in the Sèvres collections at the Château de Compiègne. Evidently, Desportes was pleased with the present work, as similar motifs reappear in some of his later paintings. He clearly regarded the work as a success in terms of the balance of the composition. In subsequent works, such as the Still life in a marble niche (Paris, Ministry of Justice), or Still life with dead game and fruit, originally painted for the prince de Conti (Private Collection, France), very similar baskets and bowls of plums, with the same triangular configuration can be found. The delicate curl of the leaves and the brittle twigs in the centre struggle to counterbalance the weight of the hanging fruit in the lower left, and at lower right one plum has tumbled out of the basket. In his later works the same plum serves to counterbalance suspended game, whilst here the plums are the object in and of themselves, with the plump fruit dangling tantalisingly as the ultimate offering to the viewer.
Trained in the Paris studio of the Flemish artist Nicasius Bernaerts (1620–1678), himself a former pupil of the renowned seventeenth century still-life painter, Frans Snyders (1579-1657), Desportes spent much of his life working in the Flemish realist tradition. In 1699, Desportes was received into the Académie Royale as an animal painter, and shortly thereafter won the first of many royal commissions that were to span the next forty-three years. Two years later, the King commissioned for the Château de Marly six portraits of his favourite hunting dogs, which were reputedly so life-like that he could identify each dog by name. Desportes continued to work for Louis XV on his ascension to the throne as painter to the Royal Hunt and exhibited frequently at the Salon until 1742.
The plums in this painting, with the dusty bloom over the deep purple of their flesh, are a wonderful testament to Desportes’ early interest in painting from life. Even in this early stage of his career, his dexterous brushwork effortlessly captures the contrasting textures of the soft fruit, the curling leaves and the coarse-weave basket. As his son, Claude-François Desportes, explained in a lecture honouring his father after his death: ‘despite the large number of studies that he had made, and to which he had little recourse unless the natural was inaccessible, he tirelessly consulted nature on every occasion and she, in recompense, always supplied him with something new’ (‘Vie d’Alexandre-François Desportes’, lecture, 3 August 1748, Conférences de l'Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture V, Paris, 2012, p. 186). This Desportes had learnt from Bernaerts, who had encouraged his young protegé to draw directly from the world around him. Indeed, Desportes is known to have made a great many studies of animals, birds and flowers from life, of which more than 600 pencil drawings and oil sketches survive. The majority of these are held in the Sèvres archives, where they served as patterns for ceramic designs throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries.
While no study directly relating to the present work survives, a number of oil sketches of plums, apricots and peaches dating to the 1690s are in the Sèvres collections at the Château de Compiègne. Evidently, Desportes was pleased with the present work, as similar motifs reappear in some of his later paintings. He clearly regarded the work as a success in terms of the balance of the composition. In subsequent works, such as the Still life in a marble niche (Paris, Ministry of Justice), or Still life with dead game and fruit, originally painted for the prince de Conti (Private Collection, France), very similar baskets and bowls of plums, with the same triangular configuration can be found. The delicate curl of the leaves and the brittle twigs in the centre struggle to counterbalance the weight of the hanging fruit in the lower left, and at lower right one plum has tumbled out of the basket. In his later works the same plum serves to counterbalance suspended game, whilst here the plums are the object in and of themselves, with the plump fruit dangling tantalisingly as the ultimate offering to the viewer.