Ambassadeur de la Chine: an oriental gentleman, full-length

This picture forms part of a series of paintings and drawings made for the masquerade, La Caravane du Sultan la Mecque, staged by the pensionnaires of the Acadmie de France in Rome for the carnival of 1748. The Director of the Acadmie, Jean-Franois de Troy, invited its twelve pensionnaires to draw designs for the costumes of the masquerade, adding that these would be translated onto canvas by Barbault 'qui a beaucoup de talent' (see his address to Tournehem, in A. de Montaiglon and J. Guiffrey, Correspondance des Directeurs de l'Acadmie de France Rome, Paris, 1910, X, 27 March 1748, p. 146). Of the twenty pictures commissioned by de Troy from Barbault, nine have been rediscovered, as well as several of the related drawings, variously attributed to Voiriot and Vien, as well as Barbault (see catalogue of the exhibition, Jean Barbault, Beauvais, Angers and Valence, 1974-5, pp. 32-40). The present picture, which was unknown to the authors of the 1974-5 exhibition catalogue, is one of only two from the series, for which an almost exactly corresponding drawing by Barbault is known. That which corresponds directly to the present lot was sold in a sale at Rouen, 8-9 July 1971, lot 25 (op. cit., p. 36, no. 8). Another drawing of a Chinese ambassador from the same series was executed by Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809), and engraved in reverse (see T.W. Gaehtgens and J. Lugand, Joseph-Marie Vien, Paris, p. 233, no. 18).