A view of the South-West façade of the château of Saint-Cloud and the Bassin des Carpes (i); and A view of the Grande Cascade of the château of Saint-Cloud (ii)

Details

Antoine Meunier (Paris 1765-1808 Nîmes)
A view of the South-West façade of the château of Saint-Cloud and the Bassin des Carpes (i); and A view of the Grande Cascade of the château of Saint-Cloud (ii)
dated and signed 'en 1788 . meunier fecit' (i); signed 'meunier fecit' (ii)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolor
7 x 10 in. (17.7 x 25.4 cm.) (2)
(2)

Provenance

Pierre Defer (1798-1870) and Henri Dumesnil (1823-1898) (L. 739);
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 11-12 May 1900, lots 189-190 ('Meunier, Les Grandes Eaux à Saint-Cloud', sold for 3500 francs).
Gustave Mühlbacher, Paris; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 13-15 May 1907, lots 99-100 (as Philippe Meunier).
Georges Heine, Paris; Palais Galliera, Paris, 23 March 1971, lot 6; where purchased by the late owners.

Literature

'Mouvement des arts: Collection Defer-Dumesnil', La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (Supplément à la Gazette des Beaux-Arts), no. 20, 19 May 1900, p. 196 (as Pierre and Philippe Meunier).
'Chronique des ventes. Tableaux-objets d'Art Curiosité: Collection Defer-Dumesnil', Le Bulletin de l'art ancien et moderne, LX, 19 May 1900, p. 155.
J. Daurelle, 'La curiosité. Collection G. Mühlbacher: Peintures, acquarelles, gouaches, dessins [...]', Mercure de France, no. 238, LXVIII, 15 May 1907, p. 567.
D. Sutton, French Drawings of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1949, p. 50, under pl. VII (i, as signed and dated 1783; as Philippe Meunier).
F. Austin Montenay, Saint -Cloud. Une Vie de château, Geneva 2005, p. 306, ill. p. 101.

Engraved

by François-Denis Née, published in Voyage pittoresque de la France, Paris 1784-1792, IV, Département de Paris, p. 4, Saint-Cloud, figs. 2, 4.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

These views capture the eighteenth-century splendor of the park of Saint-Cloud before its partial destruction in 1870. The drawings served as models for prints in an ambitious description of France by various authors, published in Paris between 1784 and 1792 under the title Voyage pittoresque de la France, to which the draughtsman, Antoine Meunier, contributed numerous views. The first drawing records the château proper, shortly after it was acquired for Queen Marie-Antoinette, and transformed by the architect Richard Mique (see Austin Montenay, op. cit., pp. 90-111). The second view shows the famous Grande Cascade, still preserved and built in the 1660s as part of the garden design by André Le Notre. Marie-Antoinette had opened the park and even the château, and they drew a large and elegant public which came to ‘to see the waterworks and l’Autrichienne’, i.e. the Queen (ibid., p. 90).

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