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Lot Essay
Typical of the most famous head studies, this three-crayon drawing by Antoine Watteau suggests a mature work. Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, in 1997, dated the drawing to around 1716, just after a technical turning point in the artist's graphic career, when he developed the use of the so-called trois crayons technique. The sitter's face, seen from three different angles, appears to be the same as that of a Portrait bust of a woman in the British Museum (inv. 1910-2-12-97; Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., II, no. 411), which inspired an etching by Pierre Filloeul (1696 - ca.1754) for his Livre des différents caractères de têtes. This famous posthumous collection of prints after drawings by Watteau was published in several volumes between 1726 and 1735.
The drawing was part of the collection of the London grain merchant Andrew James, a passionate collector of Watteau’s works that was referred to as 'Mr. Watteau' by Edmond de Goncourt. Later it belonged to Camille Groult (1837-1908), owner of the famous Groult Album, a collection of drawings by Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Pater, and other artists associated with him, which entered the Louvre Museum in 1998 (P. Rosenberg, 'L'album Groult, dit aussi album Lepeltier', in Preussen: die Kunst und das Individuum. Beiträge gewidmet Helmut Borsch-Supan, Berlin, 2003, pp. 29-39).
The drawing was part of the collection of the London grain merchant Andrew James, a passionate collector of Watteau’s works that was referred to as 'Mr. Watteau' by Edmond de Goncourt. Later it belonged to Camille Groult (1837-1908), owner of the famous Groult Album, a collection of drawings by Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Pater, and other artists associated with him, which entered the Louvre Museum in 1998 (P. Rosenberg, 'L'album Groult, dit aussi album Lepeltier', in Preussen: die Kunst und das Individuum. Beiträge gewidmet Helmut Borsch-Supan, Berlin, 2003, pp. 29-39).