CHARLES-JOSEPH NATOIRE (PARIS 1700-1777)
CHARLES-JOSEPH NATOIRE (PARIS 1700-1777)
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Property from the Collection of Dr. Corinne Bronfman
CHARLES-JOSEPH NATOIRE (PARIS 1700-1777)

A seated female nude holding a bunch of grapes while embracing a child

Details
CHARLES-JOSEPH NATOIRE (PARIS 1700-1777)
A seated female nude holding a bunch of grapes while embracing a child
red chalk, heightened with white, on light brown paper
13 x 9 3⁄8 in. (32.7 x 23.7 cm)
Provenance
Guichardot collection, Paris, 1894 (according to a label on the back of the frame).
Viscount Charles Ghislain Guillaume Vilain XIIII (1803-1878), Brussels.
with Colnaghi, London (Exhibition of Old Master Drawings, 1971, no. 85).
with Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, New York.
Gerald Bronfman (1911-1986) and Marjorie Bronfman, née Schechter (1917-2012), Montreal; by descent to
Corinne Bronfman (1947-2022), Washington DC; by descent to the present owners.
Literature
W. Vitzthum, ‘Dessins français du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècle dans les collections américaines’, L'Œil, August-September 1972, p. 14, fig. 10.
Charles-Joseph Natoire (Nîmes, 1700-Castel Gandolfo 1777), exhib. cat., Troyes, Musée des Beaux-Arts and elsewhere, 1977, p. 90, under no. 56.
Les Amours des Dieux. La peinture mythologique de Watteau à David, exhib. cat., Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais and elsewhere, 1991-1992, p. 264, under no. 40, fig. 5.
S. Cavaglia-Brunel, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Paris, 2012, no. D.416, ill.

Brought to you by

Giada Damen, Ph.D.
Giada Damen, Ph.D. AVP, Specialist, Head of Sale

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Lot Essay

This drawing was made in preparation for the central figure of Erigone in Natoire’s The Triumph of Bacchus at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. 6854; see Caviglia-Brunel, op. cit., no. P.187, ill.), acquired by King Louis XV in 1747, the year it was first exhibited at the Salon. Erigone, the daughter of Icarus, was seduced by Bacchus, who assumed the shape of a cluster of grapes, as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VI,125). However, the version of the story that inspired Natoire may have been a contemporary French translation by Antoine de la Fosse of Anacreon’s Odes, where the story of Erigone was conflated with that of the Triumph of Bacchus (exhib. cat., Paris, 1991-1992, op. cit., p. 263).

In addition to the present sheet, Natoire made several drawings for figures in the painting: a study of Bacchus (Sotheby’s, New York, 8 January 1991, lot 78; see Caviglia-Brunel, op. cit., no. D.415, ill.); a study for the faun carrying a basket of grapes in the right middle ground in Smith College Museum of Art, (Northampton (inv. 1951.270); and a study of a woman nursing an infant (Louvre, inv. 31425; see ibid., no. D.377, ill.), which in the painting was adapted to the woman holding a silver pitcher (exhib. cat., Paris, 1991-1992, op. cit., pp. 264-266, figs. 3, 4, 6).

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