Augustin Pajou (1730-1809)

A study for a pediment: A coat-of-arms with the order of the Holy Spirit, and allegories of Prudence and Liberality

Details

Augustin Pajou (1730-1809)
A study for a pediment: A coat-of-arms with the order of the Holy Spirit, and allegories of Prudence and Liberality
red and black chalk
8½ x 23 in. (216 x 586 mm.)

Provenance

Eugène Tondu; Paris, 10-12 May 1865, part of lot 373 (15 frs. to Goncourt).
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt; Paris, 16 February 1897, lot 226 (820 frs. to Léger).
Anon. sale; Paris, 8 February 1954, lot 22.

Literature

E. de Goncourt, La maison d'un artiste, Paris, 1881, p. 132.
H. Stein, Augustin Pajou, Paris, 1912, p. 197, note 2.
E. Launay, Les frêres Goncourt collectionneurs de dessins, Paris, 1991, no. 243.
S. Descat, 'Moreau et la sculpture', Augustin Pajou et ses contemporains, Paris, 1999, p. 173 and p. 182, note 40.

Exhibited

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Dessins de décoration et d'ornements de maîtres anciens, 1880, no. 289.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, France in the 18th Century, 1968, no. 527.
Paris, Musée du Louvre and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pajou, 1997-8, no. 41.

Lot Essay

Related to the pediment on the right pavilion of the façade of the Palais Royal on the rue Saint-Honoré, Paris (Paris, exhib. cat., 1997, fig. 54). On 6 April 1763 the Opera of the Palais Royal burnt down and the owner of the Palais Royal, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duc d'Orléans, commissioned the architects Contant d'Ivry and Pierre-Louis Moreau to rebuild the Opera and the palace. Pajou was hired as the main sculptor, along with Defernex. Pajou also sculpted the pediment of the left pavilion on the rue Saint-Honoré with putti and allegories of Justice. The two pediments were finished by 1765 and cost the huge sum of 6,000 livres each.
That part of the Palais Royal was destroyed by fire during the Commune of 1871 and Pajou's pediments are today known through old photographs. The sculptor Adolphe Thabard recarved the sculptures in 1872-4.

More from Old Master and 19th Century Drawings including Property from

View All