A seated couple playing backgammon by candlelight

Details

Charles-Nicolas Cochin (Paris 1715-1790)
A seated couple playing backgammon by candlelight
black chalk, fragmentary watermark Seven Provinces
5 7/8 x 7¼ in. (148 x 184 mm.)

Provenance

A. Normand (L. 153c); Christie's, London, 6 July 1999, lot 149.

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie La Scala, Femmes, June 1991, no. 38.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Genre compositions were among Cochin's favourite subjects both for drawings and engravings. Analagous to the present work is a drawing of 1742, also in black chalk, of Madame Geoffrin playing cards (formerly with Day and Faber, London), engraved en manière de sanguine by Demarteau (S. Rocheblave, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Paris and Brussels, 1927, pl. XLI). Perhaps Cochin's most famous series of genre compositions, engraved partly by the artist, was the group of four engravings of Les quatre âges (S. Rocheblave, op. cit., pls. XX-XXIII).

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