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Lot Essay
A pupil of Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont and Jean Restout, both exponents of the renewal of history painting in France, Deshays was far more indebted to the lush pictorial styles of Carle van Loo, his master at the École des élèves protégés, and François Boucher, whose elder daughter he married in 1758. A testament to these influences, this oil sketch was confidently executed with generous brushstrokes over a lively underdrawing, traced in pen and ink.
Stylistically, the work relates to a number of oil sketches by the artist, usually executed in preparation for larger paintings, such as The last Communion of Saint Benedict (Louvre, RF 1997-53) completed in the early 1760’s for an altarpiece now in Orléans. Even closer stylistic and iconographic similarities can be established with his sketch for Tobit burying the dead (Paris, private collection; A. Bancel, Jean-Baptiste Deshays, 1729-1765, Paris, 2008, no. D.74, ill.), where Deshays developed a strikingly similar group composition in a theatrical setting. The identification of the present moonlit scene remains hypothetical, but it may relate to the touching passage in Homer’s Iliad describing Achilles' reaction to the death of Patroclus.
Stylistically, the work relates to a number of oil sketches by the artist, usually executed in preparation for larger paintings, such as The last Communion of Saint Benedict (Louvre, RF 1997-53) completed in the early 1760’s for an altarpiece now in Orléans. Even closer stylistic and iconographic similarities can be established with his sketch for Tobit burying the dead (Paris, private collection; A. Bancel, Jean-Baptiste Deshays, 1729-1765, Paris, 2008, no. D.74, ill.), where Deshays developed a strikingly similar group composition in a theatrical setting. The identification of the present moonlit scene remains hypothetical, but it may relate to the touching passage in Homer’s Iliad describing Achilles' reaction to the death of Patroclus.