Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Le Gobien, seigneur de Saint-Jouan, holding a gun, seated, with two dogs

Details

Jean-Marc Nattier (Paris 1685-1766)
Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Le Gobien, seigneur de Saint-Jouan, holding a gun, seated, with two dogs
with inscription 'Trevisiani'
black and white chalk on brown paper, watermark column in a crowned cartouche
16 1/8 x 10¼ in. (410 x 263 mm.)

Provenance

Anon. sale; Sotheby's, New York, 27 January 1999, lot 101 (as Francesco Trevisani).

Literature

X. Salmon, Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685-1766, exhib. cat., Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, 1999, p. 74, fig. 1.

Special notice

Christie's generally offer property consigned by others for sale at public auction. From time to time, lots are offered which Christie's International Plc or one of its subsidiary companies owns in whole or in part. Such a lot is offered subject to a reserve, unless otherwise stated. This is such a lot. No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

A preliminary drawing for Nattier's portrait of Le Gobien dated 1724, now in a Canadian private collection (X. Salmon, op. cit., no. 9). Xavier Salmon notes that the arrangement of the dogs, the high horizon line and the thickly wooded background shows the influence on Nattier of Alexandre-François Desportes, while the finished picture owes more to Jean-Baptiste Santerre.
The sitter was the scion of an ancient Saint Malo family ennobled in 1572. As a young man, his considerable fortune depended from his father, a director of the Compagnie des Indes and from September 1720 Général de la Nation française des Indes. When the young Le Gobien married Marie-Modeste Martin in the cathedral of Saint Malo in 1724, the year of the present portrait, the marriage contract brought him a dowry of 100,000 livres.

More from Old Master and 19th Century Drawings

View All