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拍品专文
Liotard was born to French Protestants who had left France for Geneva after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Although his initial training was as a miniaturist, he was soon sent to Paris to continue his apprenticeship with the history painter Jean-Baptiste Massé. When his three-year contract with Massé came to an end, he set up on his own. He had already achieved a measure of success as a portraitist and printmaker when he left Paris in 1735 to travel to Italy in the company of the Viscomte de Puisieux, French Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, who was en route to Naples. From there he journeyed to Rome, arriving in time for Easter 1736 and meeting William Ponsonby, later 2nd Earl of Bessborough, who invited him aboard his yacht the Clifton for a tour of Malta, the Greek Isles, and Constantinople. Arriving in Constantiople in June 1738, the artist remained there for the next four years.
At this period, Constantinople had a flourishing settlement of Europeans, notably British and French. Through his aristocratic patrons Liotard gained an entrée to this community and quickly established himself as a portraitist and genre painter, working in oil, pastels, and colored chalks. While he produced a relatively small number of finished portraits, these images of members of the local European ex-patriot community dressed in Turkish costume were of a quality -- and eccentricity -- to draw the admiration of his distinguished sitters: Ponsonby and his wife (Bessborough collection, Stansted Park), the Earl of Sandwich (collection of the Earls of Sandwich, London), the English archeologist Richard Potocke (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva), and the English merchant Mr. Levett and his friend Miss Hélène Glavani (Musée du Louvre, Paris) all sat to Liotard in full Turkish dress. In addition, Liotard created memorable images of the exotic life of the city in genre scenes such as Woman in Turkish costume with her Servant in a Hammam, known to exist in five versions in oil and pastel. (One of the pastels is being offered for sale in these rooms in the sale of Old Master & Nineteenth Century Drawings, January 23, 2002, lot 77.)
Many of the Turkish genre paintings and pastels were probably executed after Liotard returned to France in 1742, and were based on drawings that he had sketched in Constantinople. Approximately seventy-five drawings have survived from his sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, most of them seductive figure and costume studies à deux crayons. As in the portraits of this period, most of the genre scenes would have depicted European models in local costume, especially Frankish (or non-Muslim) women, who were willing to pose unveiled; because of the strict laws of the Quran, few Muslim women appear to have modelled for him. (An exception is the drawing in the Morgan Library, New York; see A. Wintermute, Watteau and his World: French Drawing from 1700 to 1750, London and New York, 1999, no. 67).
The ravishing Sultane lisant almost certainly portrays a European model in Turkish costume, although the sitter is not identified. Liotard is obviously fascinated with the exotic, colorful and multi-patterned textiles and furs of the model's clothing, and he takes great care to distinguish among its different textures; he sets his Sultana off like a jewel against the plain blue cushions of the divan and the stark and unadorned fawn walls behind her. No less appealing to the artist and his patrons than the subject's alluring exoticism would have been her quiet absorption in her reading. The theme of reading appears often in advanced painting of the middle of the eighteenth century, and can be found in a variety of pictures by Greuze, Chardin, and Carle Vanloo, among others, though rarely with the gentle poetry found in Liotard's depiction. A philosophical Sultana entranced by a book, opened, tantalizingly, to a chapter entitled 'La Virtue', would have been sure to charm enlightened art lovers in the age of Diderot.
The present La Sultane lisant is one of four painted versions of the subject by Liotard. The first version, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Algiers, is based closely on a drawing in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Carcassonne (fig. 1); both the painting and the drawing appear to date from Liotard's years in Constantinople. A second drawing (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), probably also made in Turkey, differs from the first in one significant respect: in it, the Sultana's left hand rests along the top of the sofa cushions, rather than resting lower on the cushion as in the Carcassonne drawing and Algiers painting. Liotard probably looked to this second drawing when he executed the three other painted versions of the composition some years later in Paris; these paintings--in the Uffizi, Florence; that formerly in the Erlanger-Luginbühl collection, Washington, D.C. ; and the present lot--all employ the higher placement of her outstretched arm, and all are dated by Roethlisberger to c. 1750.
The obvious popularity of Liotard's composition led not only to the multiple replicas produced by the artist, but to copies and variants by other artists, notably Francois Boucher's rococo drawing (ex-collection Francis Roux-Devillas) that was based on Liotard's sketch in Carcassonne. Boucher's copy was engraved by G-A Duclos as an illustration for Guer's book Moeurs et usages des Turcs, which appeared in 1747. (Numerous copies of this drawing survive including one in the Morgan Library that is very close to Boucher's original.) Boucher's version helped disseminate Liotard's already successful invention and thus spawned numerous other drawings, including those attributed to Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (see de Herdt, op. cit., under no. 71).
Liotard's adventures in the Levant remained alive in his memory long after his return to France, and found expression not only in his work but also in his personal life. His love of the Middle East and its people was sincere and lifelong, and he transformed himself into a veritable native who was thoroughly familiar with the language, art, and culture of the region. Upon his return to Europe, he acquired the habit of wearing Turkish dress and grew a long beard (such eccentricities contributed to his fame), and continued an itinerant career as a portraitist. Taken up by a cosmopolitan array of ambassadors, grand tourists, and heads of state, he worked for the Habsburg court between 1743 and 1745; was presented to Louis XV and commissioned to paint a portrait of the king and his five daughters in 1749; and also travelled to Venice, London, Amsterdam and Geneva to fulfill requests for portraits. Despite his international success, he was refused admission by the French Academy, in part because of his religion. He is today recognized as an innovator whose influence was to extend beyond his contemporaries well into the nineteenth century, paving the way for great Orientalist painters such as Ingres, Delacroix and Gerôme.
We are grateful to Renée Loche for confirming the attribution of the present work to Liotard, having examined it in person.
At this period, Constantinople had a flourishing settlement of Europeans, notably British and French. Through his aristocratic patrons Liotard gained an entrée to this community and quickly established himself as a portraitist and genre painter, working in oil, pastels, and colored chalks. While he produced a relatively small number of finished portraits, these images of members of the local European ex-patriot community dressed in Turkish costume were of a quality -- and eccentricity -- to draw the admiration of his distinguished sitters: Ponsonby and his wife (Bessborough collection, Stansted Park), the Earl of Sandwich (collection of the Earls of Sandwich, London), the English archeologist Richard Potocke (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva), and the English merchant Mr. Levett and his friend Miss Hélène Glavani (Musée du Louvre, Paris) all sat to Liotard in full Turkish dress. In addition, Liotard created memorable images of the exotic life of the city in genre scenes such as Woman in Turkish costume with her Servant in a Hammam, known to exist in five versions in oil and pastel. (One of the pastels is being offered for sale in these rooms in the sale of Old Master & Nineteenth Century Drawings, January 23, 2002, lot 77.)
Many of the Turkish genre paintings and pastels were probably executed after Liotard returned to France in 1742, and were based on drawings that he had sketched in Constantinople. Approximately seventy-five drawings have survived from his sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, most of them seductive figure and costume studies à deux crayons. As in the portraits of this period, most of the genre scenes would have depicted European models in local costume, especially Frankish (or non-Muslim) women, who were willing to pose unveiled; because of the strict laws of the Quran, few Muslim women appear to have modelled for him. (An exception is the drawing in the Morgan Library, New York; see A. Wintermute, Watteau and his World: French Drawing from 1700 to 1750, London and New York, 1999, no. 67).
The ravishing Sultane lisant almost certainly portrays a European model in Turkish costume, although the sitter is not identified. Liotard is obviously fascinated with the exotic, colorful and multi-patterned textiles and furs of the model's clothing, and he takes great care to distinguish among its different textures; he sets his Sultana off like a jewel against the plain blue cushions of the divan and the stark and unadorned fawn walls behind her. No less appealing to the artist and his patrons than the subject's alluring exoticism would have been her quiet absorption in her reading. The theme of reading appears often in advanced painting of the middle of the eighteenth century, and can be found in a variety of pictures by Greuze, Chardin, and Carle Vanloo, among others, though rarely with the gentle poetry found in Liotard's depiction. A philosophical Sultana entranced by a book, opened, tantalizingly, to a chapter entitled 'La Virtue', would have been sure to charm enlightened art lovers in the age of Diderot.
The present La Sultane lisant is one of four painted versions of the subject by Liotard. The first version, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Algiers, is based closely on a drawing in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Carcassonne (fig. 1); both the painting and the drawing appear to date from Liotard's years in Constantinople. A second drawing (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), probably also made in Turkey, differs from the first in one significant respect: in it, the Sultana's left hand rests along the top of the sofa cushions, rather than resting lower on the cushion as in the Carcassonne drawing and Algiers painting. Liotard probably looked to this second drawing when he executed the three other painted versions of the composition some years later in Paris; these paintings--in the Uffizi, Florence; that formerly in the Erlanger-Luginbühl collection, Washington, D.C. ; and the present lot--all employ the higher placement of her outstretched arm, and all are dated by Roethlisberger to c. 1750.
The obvious popularity of Liotard's composition led not only to the multiple replicas produced by the artist, but to copies and variants by other artists, notably Francois Boucher's rococo drawing (ex-collection Francis Roux-Devillas) that was based on Liotard's sketch in Carcassonne. Boucher's copy was engraved by G-A Duclos as an illustration for Guer's book Moeurs et usages des Turcs, which appeared in 1747. (Numerous copies of this drawing survive including one in the Morgan Library that is very close to Boucher's original.) Boucher's version helped disseminate Liotard's already successful invention and thus spawned numerous other drawings, including those attributed to Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (see de Herdt, op. cit., under no. 71).
Liotard's adventures in the Levant remained alive in his memory long after his return to France, and found expression not only in his work but also in his personal life. His love of the Middle East and its people was sincere and lifelong, and he transformed himself into a veritable native who was thoroughly familiar with the language, art, and culture of the region. Upon his return to Europe, he acquired the habit of wearing Turkish dress and grew a long beard (such eccentricities contributed to his fame), and continued an itinerant career as a portraitist. Taken up by a cosmopolitan array of ambassadors, grand tourists, and heads of state, he worked for the Habsburg court between 1743 and 1745; was presented to Louis XV and commissioned to paint a portrait of the king and his five daughters in 1749; and also travelled to Venice, London, Amsterdam and Geneva to fulfill requests for portraits. Despite his international success, he was refused admission by the French Academy, in part because of his religion. He is today recognized as an innovator whose influence was to extend beyond his contemporaries well into the nineteenth century, paving the way for great Orientalist painters such as Ingres, Delacroix and Gerôme.
We are grateful to Renée Loche for confirming the attribution of the present work to Liotard, having examined it in person.