NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830)
NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830)
NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830)
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NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830)

The Aqueduct at Rio de Janeiro

Details
NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830)
The Aqueduct at Rio de Janeiro
oil on canvas
25 ¼ x 32 ¼ in. (64.1 x 81.9 cm.)
Painted in Brazil circa 1816-1817.
Provenance
Anon, sale; Pierre Bergé & Associés, Paris, 7 June 2021, lot 53
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Further Details
We are grateful to Claudine Lebrun Jouve and Pedro Corrêa do Lago for confirming the attribution of this work.

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Kristen France
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Lot Essay

Born in Paris, Taunay entered the studio of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié when he was thirteen and later worked with Nicolas-Guy Brenet and Francesco Casanova. He was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in 1784, following an introduction by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and subsequently traveled to Rome (1784-87), where he encountered Jacques-Louis David, Louis Gauffier, and Antoine-Denis Chaudet, among others. A regular contributor to the Salon between 1787 and 1827, Taunay gained early acclaim for his small landscape paintings; he expanded his practice in the wake of the Revolution to become one of the State painters under Napoleon, crowned as Emperor in 1804. “He was above all a genre painter, influenced initially by Dutch painting, but capable of elevating genre to a certain majesty, as is demonstrated by his numerous biblical, religious, and historical works,” observes curator Suzanne Gutwirth. “It is extremely rare to find pure landscapes in his oeuvre; he loved to stir up crowds, to animate a site with joyous dance, shepherds walking, a village wedding, or a mythological scene” (“A Pre-Romantic Painting by Nicolas-Antoine Taunay,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art Bulletin 25, 1979, p. 34). The present, hitherto unpublished work is one of Taunay’s largest extant paintings of downtown Rio de Janeiro and exemplary of the celebrated cityscapes that he made during his sojourn in Brazil.

“When the Empire fell, Taunay was invited by the ambassador of the king of Portugal and Brazil to participate in a project along with the painter’s brother—the sculptor Auguste-Marie Taunay—the architect Auguste-Henri Victor Grandjean de Montigny, the engraver Charles Simon Pradier, Jean-Baptiste Debret, and the composer Neucom, a disciple of Haydn,” notes Gutwirth. “The mission of this group was to create an academy of fine arts in Rio de Janeiro. In 1816 Taunay left with his family for Brazil, where he remained for five years. While there he executed numerous works for the royal palaces” (ibid., p. 33). The present painting, which belongs to this period, portrays the aqueduct in Rio, looking south from Mata-Cavallos, with slaves boiling sugarcane beneath two large palm trees. The convent of Santa Teresa rises in the distance to the right; the Morro of Santo Antônio and the Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, at the horizon line, appear at the far left. The painting’s elevated viewpoint is shared by two paintings in the collection of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro: Largo da Carioca (1816) and Entrada da baía e da cidade do Rio a partir do terraço do convent de Santo Antônio (1816).

In her study of Taunay, Claudine Lebrun Jouve cites thirty Brazilian landscapes among the fifty-two oil paintings that he completed in Rio (Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Paris, 2003, pp. 286-301). Two missing works feature the aqueduct: L’Ouragan (or Ouragan près du grand aqueduc de Rio) and Vue d’un des principaux quartiers de Rio de Janeiro, nommé Mata-Cavallo. The first painting has the same dimensions as the present work, but its descriptions—by both Taunay and the catalogue of his estate sale in 1831—clearly indicate a different picture. In 1819, Taunay described the latter painting, which he exhibited at the Salon in 1822, as follows: “Third view on the right of Mata-Cavallo Street, in the middle ground, the house of the chief treasurer and on a more distant plane the aqueduct. On the heights that rise to the right is the convent of Santa Teresa and on the opposite side is the church of Saint Sebastian” (Fondation Custodia, inv. No.1971-A-263). The chief treasurer, Francisco Bento Maria Targini, Visconde de São Lourenço, was a patron of the French Artistic Mission that had brought Taunay to Brazil, and his home was one of the city’s first three-storied houses, built in the eighteenth century at the corner of Mata-Cavallos (now Rua Riachuelo) and Rua dos Inválidos, north of the aqueduct.

The present painting appears to be the lost Vue d’un des principaux quartiers de Rio de Janeiro, nommé Mata-Cavallo. A drawing by Jacques Arago of the aqueduct further supports this attribution, as suggested by Pedro Corrêa do Lago: “At the time when it was probably painted, the corresponding picture, now disappeared, must have been part of the first group of urban landscapes in Rio (which Taunay may have conceived as a small series) made to be ‘submitted to the Institute.’ …The engraving [after] a drawing by Arago, who was with Taunay in Rio precisely on the probable date of this painting, may relate closely, if not exactly, with the composition of this important missing painting from Taunay” (Taunay e o Brasil: obra completa 1816-1821, Rio de Janeiro, 2008, p. 175). The Arago drawing of the aqueduct and Taunay’s description of the lost picture might even suggest that the artists worked side by side or, more likely, that Arago simply copied Taunay’s view.

Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

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