Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle* (1717-1806)

THREE IMPORTANT DRAWINGS BY CARMONTELLE Louis Carrogis was born on the 25 August 1717, the third son of a shoemaker whose shop was situated near the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Very little is known about the artist's early years as he took great care to hide his origins, which were only traced in 1872. The name Louis de Carmontelle first appears in the rolls of the French army in Westphalia, which record a gentleman of thirty-nine travelling in 1756, with Monsieur de Pons-Saint-Maurice, tutor to the Duc de Chartres. Richard de Lédans, the artist's first biographer, admitted that 'Carmontelle's military talents were limited to drawing up maps, carving the General's turkey and sketching caricatures of officers, which made him very popular'. At the end of the war in 1763, Monsieur de Pons-Saint-Maurice secured a position for his protégé as Lecteur du Duc de Chartres in the household of the Duc d'Orléans, a post he retained until the revolution, receiving a salary of 1,800 livres per annum. The House to which Carmontelle attached himself was the second court of France after Versailles. The Duc d'Orléans, Louis-Philippe (1725-1785), called Louis le Gros because of his obesity, was Premier Prince de Sang, grandson of the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, the uncle of King Louis XV. The Court of Orléans traditionally resided at Saint-Cloud and Villers-Cotterêt in the country, or at the Palais-Royal in Paris. Louis le Gros's son, Louis-Philippe Duc de Chartres (1747-1793), better known as Philippe Egalité, married the daughter of the Duc de Penthiève who was one of the richest men of his age. Until 1785, Carmontelle served both dukes. Although both father and son were weak and eccentric characters, they played an indirect yet important role in the build up to the French revolution. They gradually isolated themselves from the court of Versailles, involuntarily taking the lead in a parliamentary group opposed to royal authority. The erratic behaviour of both princes attracted the attention of Parisians and their popularity increased in the second half of the 18th Century, making the court of the Palais-Royal a center of rebellious political activity. After the death of the Duc d'Orléans in 1785, the tension between Versailles and the Palais-Royal reached a peak. At the outbreak of the revolution Louis Philippe, soon nicknamed Philippe Egalité for political reasons, was on the reformer's side. He voted for the death of his cousin, King Louis XVI, and himself died at the guillotine in 1793. Carmontelle had a brilliant career at the Court of Orléans. Initially employed by Monsieur de Pons-Saint-Maurice, Carmontelle was asked to teach the young Duc de Chartres mathematics. This soon proved an impossible task: the young Prince never read more than ten books in his life and was a very dissolute youth. The blame was laid on Monsieur de Pons-Saint-Maurice, his governor, who was a very poor tutor as his book, Réflexions concernant l'éducation du Prince suggests. Read in the light of his pupil's future destiny it is a distinctly ominous work: 'treat a child coldly, never touch him or kiss him, keep him away from puppet shows which are vile and low but replace them with animal fights [...], do not allow him to take an interest in anything low such as dogs or servants'. Such methods evidently failed and Carmontelle opted for more entertaining activities. A few years after Carmontelle took up his position, two ladies appeared at the Court who were later to play a central part in the lives of the Princes. The Marquise de Montesson and her niece, Madame de Genlis, ingratiated themselves with the Princes and progressively set up some Salons at the Palais-Royal. They exploited Carmontelle's talents. He read Molière aloud, wrote and produced short plays with plots based on proverbs. These short pieces could easily be acted by the visitors to the Salons. Scientists and literary figures were invited. Madame de Montesson, after much resistance from the Court of Versailles, married the Duc d'Orléans, and Madame de Genlis became the Duc de Chartres's mistress. The Palais-Royal became the stage on which they orchestrated an intense social life for eighteen years. Carmontelle shared their success. He became the organiser of all the events at court and carried out many other tasks. In 1773 the Duc de Chartres acquired a few acres of land outside Paris. Carmontelle became a garden designer, creating what is now the Parc Monceau. The little that is known about Carmontelle's life is recorded in memoirs, particularly in Madame de Genlis's introduction to Carmontelle's edition of the Proverbes which she published in eight volumes in 1825. Her descripton of Carmontelle's position at court has frequently been quoted: 'His standing at court was honorable yet rather subordinate since he did not eat with the Princes, not even in the country'. Such a condescending remark from Madame de Genlis underlines the harsh etiquette of a court which both she and Carmontelle tried so hard to turn into a literary Salon. Carmontelle's position was indeed awkward. He was praised for his wit and talent, yet he remained a kind of superior servant in the eyes of a world obsessed with aristocratic protocol. During the summer, Carmontelle stayed in the country at Villers-Cotterêt, where he drew amongst other portraits that of the milkmaid (lot 107), in a house which the Regent had had remodelled by Oppenord in the 1720s. In the evenings he would join the ducal family for ice-creams and his talent as a portraitist gave him a raison d'être in the company of visitors. The dignity of his portraits invariably drawn in profile and tempered with delicate colouring reveals the intense formality of this aristocratic Salon. 'Our friend Carmontelle sketched his portraits with the air of a baker baking cakes', wrote Grimm, in December 1767. On a previous occasion in May 1763, in his Correspondance Littéraire Philosophique et Critique, Paris, V, 1878, Grimm mentioned that 'Monsieur de Carmontelle had made albums of portraits drawn in chalk and painted in watercolor and bodycolor. His talent consists in catching the look, demeanour and character of his sitter. Everyday I find myself recognising people that I have never seen other than in these books. His portraits are full-length and sketched within two hours with a striking ease. Carmontelle managed to draw most of the ladies of Paris with their consent. The books which he is constantly adding to, give a perfect idea of the diversity of the people he encountered, men and women from all classes, from Monsieur le Dauphin to the boot-black of Saint-Cloud'. In fact the portraits that the sitter could admire at the end of the evening were drawn in three chalks, using a technique called 'aux trois crayons', which Watteau had made fashionable at the Crozat Salon in the early part of the century. By the 1760s the technique was somewhat antiquated but still satisfied the audience. It must have been later, in his rooms, that Carmontelle added watercolour and bodycolour to the drawings, which he then inserted into one of eleven albums, containing 750 portraits. These albums remained in the artist's possession, forming a collection of portraits with no particular order. The fact that Carmontelle drew these portraits for himself, and only made copies when a visitor requested one, is instructive. The eight copies of the Young Mozart playing the Piano with his Father, reflect the excitement surrounding the young virtuoso's visit to Paris. However, if these portraits now typify 18th Century French taste, they must have been a rather eccentric group of drawings in the eyes of their sitters who were accustomed to the polished images of Roslin and Duplessis. Nonetheless Carmontelle was appreciated in more intellectual circles. Baron Grimm, in 1763, praised the collection, writing that 'these albums are an eminently curious ensemble which may well serve one day to embellish our memories of this century.' He had 27 of Carmontelle's portraits engraved for Catherine the Great who was eager to have informal likenesses of people such as the Duc d'Orléans, Voltaire, Bachaumont, Franklin and Trudaine. It is revealing that Grimm, one of the pillars of the Paris literary Salons, admitted that he had not met many of the sitters, whose faces he later recognised from having seen the drawings. It shows how much the two circles were kept apart! It was only at the end of his life that Carmontelle gave the names of all of his sitters to an old friend, Richard de Lédans, a retired army oficer. A manuscript list, now at Chantilly, was made and has been used ever since as an index. When Carmontelle died on 26 December 1806, the albums were put up for sale. Richard de Lédans offered them first to the Bibliothèque Impériale, but unfortunately the Garde des Estampes, Hugues-Adrien Joly, died before the sale. Richard de Lédans then bought them with the intention of offering them to Talleyrand but the plan failed. He then offered a few sheets to the relatives of the sitters, and sold some of the portraits, but with relatively little success. When Richard de Lédans died in 1816, Pierre de La Mésangère (1761-1831), editor of the fashion magazine, Journal des dames et de la Mode, bought 520 portraits and was the first one to break up the albums. He mounted them on the green mounts on which they remain, with the names of the sitters transcribed from the Lédans manuscripts. The portraits were rebound in two red calfskin volumes. After the death of La Mésangère, they were put up for sale and bought by John Duff. In 1877, Major Lachlan Duff Gordon-Duff of Drummuir and Park sold a major group of these portraits to Colnaghi from which 440 portraits were subsequently acquired by the Duc d'Aumale, grandson of Philippe Egalité. The Duc d'Aumale remodelled the collection, classifying every portrait according to its title and condition, and thus breaking up the chronological order of the original albums. The Duc d'Aumale subsequently added many other Carmontelles to the collection at Chantilly, which now numbers 570 portraits THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Details

Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle* (1717-1806)

A Milkmaid and a Donkey in a Wood

with inscriptions 'La Belle Laitière de Villers Cotterets./Le Bon duc D'orléans aimait Beaucoup Cette Charmante paysanne,/qui préparait La Créme fraiche pour la Bouche du prince et Lui/offrait Les plus Belles fleurs de Chaque Saison.' and '385' on the mount; black lead, red chalk, watercolor
12 1/8 x 8 1/8in. (318 x 205mm.)

Provenance

Chevalier Richard de Lédans
Pierre de La Mésangère; Paris, 18 july 1831, purchased by John Duff; and thence by descent

Lot Essay

This highly finished drawing is one of the artist's most charming and accomplished portraits. It is one of a group of three which Carmontelle drew at Villers-Cotterêt. There Carmontelle drew the Curate and the gamekeeper with the same care, both drawings are now at Chantilly. The fact that the girl is not sketched in profile like the vast majority of the artist's work, would imply that he could enjoy a much longer sitting with his model, towards whom he must have felt much closer to than so many of his aristocratic patrons. The ducal favor which the milkmaid enjoyed prompted Carmontelle to describe, in even greater detail than usual, her youthful charm