JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (PARIS 1748-1825 BRUSSELS)
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (PARIS 1748-1825 BRUSSELS)
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Property from a New York Academic’s Collection
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (PARIS 1748-1825 BRUSSELS)

A Roman imperial throne

Details
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (PARIS 1748-1825 BRUSSELS)
A Roman imperial throne
inscribed with the initials of the artist's sons Charles-Louis-Jules and François-Eugène David (lower right)
black chalk, counterproof
5 3⁄8 x 8 ½ in. (13.5 x 21.5 cm)
Provenance
Charles-Louis-Jules David (1783-1954) and François-Eugène David (1784-1830), Paris (L. 1437 and L. 839); David sale, Paris, 17 April 1826, part of lot 66 (unsold).
Second David sale, Paris, 11 March 1835, part of lot 16.
Anonymous sale; Paris, 4-5 April 1836, part of lot 164.
M. Chassagnole, Paris; by descent to his nephew
Jules David, Paris, 1882.
Marquis and Marquise de Ludre (Great-grandaughter of the artist), Paris; Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 15 March 1956, part of lot 11 (unsold); then by descent to
Marquise du Lau d’Allemans and Comtesse de Chaumont-Quitry, Versailles.
with Jacques Seligmann, New York (Master Drawings, 1961, no. 15).
John M. Wisdom Jr., New York.
with Shepherd Gallery, New York (The Non-Dissenters. French Nineteenth Century Pictures, 1968, no. 5).
Lady Mary Stuart-Walker (1906-1980), London, and by whom sold, Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 25 November 1971, lot 27.
Malcolm Forbes, New York.
with Richard L. Feigen, London (Neo-Classicism and Romanticism in French Painting 1774-1826, 1994, no. 6, ill.).
Literature
A. Schnapper and A. Sérullaz, Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, Versailles, Musée national du Château de Versailles et de Trianon, 1989, p. 81, under no. 20.
P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825. Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, 2002, I, no. 1077, ill.

Brought to you by

Giada Damen, Ph.D.
Giada Damen, Ph.D. Specialist

Lot Essay

This counterproof was part of a now disbound album of early drawings after the antique. Some of the drawings in the album were sketched directly from antique objects, while others were copied from prints (on the album see Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., p. 673). David used the technique of creating a counterproof to restore the objects to their original direction. This work can be dated to David’s first Roman sojourn, from 1775-1780, when he devoted time to studying antique works of art, together with Roman furniture such as beds, chairs and footstools. These studies became a repertoire of models that he later used in larger compositions. David inserted a chair nearly identical to the one depicted on this sheet in the compositional study for the Lictors carrying the bodies of the sons of Brutus at the Getty Museum (inv. no. 84 GA.8; Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., no. 95, ill.) and in the sheet with the Triumph of the French people in the musée Carnavalet (inv. D4852; ibid., no. 129, ill.).

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