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Lot Essay
Son of Antoine Coypel and youngest member of a dynasty of prominent history painters, Charles Coypel was something of a prodigy and was accepted into the French Academy aged 21 with the submission of Jason and Medea (Lefrançois, op. cit., p. 7, dated 1715; Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin). Independently wealthy, Coypel also pursued a literary career, though his plays were attacked and he abandoned writing for the theater in 1732. Nevertheless, his experience there had an effect on his paintings, in which he made ever greater efforts to capture the wider range of emotions, gestures and expressions that he found on the stage. Coypel's theatricality developed out of a respect for costume, readable narrative and emphatic gesture that were the staples of academic painting handed down from Poussin and Le Brun. As his father had advised him, 'If erudition is not seasoned with a certain ability to please, then it becomes dreary and dull'.
The present painting -- an especially well-documented work that the artist prized and retained in his private collection throughout his life -- is a model of Coypel's ability to season an erudite allegory with pleasing color, graceful figures and suave execution. The subject of the painting was identified in the artist's estate sale as 'la Peinture reveillant le Genie endormi' -- Painting awakening sleeping Genius. In it, the flying, female embodiment of Painting - palette and brushes in hand - descends from the heavens through a casement window to rouse the recumbent winged youth who represents Genius. The allegorical figures burst from their setting with an arresting trompe l'oeil three-dimensionality, and a preliminary drawing for the painting (Lefrançois, op. cit., D. 53; formerly, Emile Wolfe collection, New York) suggests that Coypel intended to further heighten the painting's illusionism by installing it directly over a bed on which the winged boy would appear to be reclining. An exquisite study for the figure of Painting, executed in trois crayons on blue paper, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Lefrançois, op. cit., D. 54). Thierry Lefrançois, author of the most complete catalogue of Coypel's works, regards the present painting as characteristic of the artist's style around 1730, and compares its composition and supple paint handling to that of Hercules and Omphale (Lefrançois, op. cit, p. 134, Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich) which is signed and dated '1731'.
Lefrançois' 1994 study of Coypel's life and career (with its accompanying catalogue of his paintings, drawings, pastels and etchings) renewed interest in this fascinating artist's production and drew public attention to the extraordinary range of his achievement. It also unearthed and documented a number of major works that have subsequently come on the market, including Coypel's swaggering Self Portrait in pastel of 1734 (Lefrançois, op. cit, I. 4, acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles); the magnificent 1733 pair of trompe-l'oeil oil portraits of Jacques-André Dupille, Receveur General des Finances of Lyon, and his wife and daughter costumed for a masked ball (Lefrançois, op. cit., pp. 155-6; sold, Christie's, Monaco, 19 June 1994, lot 71; now in the Collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills); the comic genre scene Children's Games (dated 1728; Lefrançois, op. cit, p. 82), a witty burlesque of the elaborate aristocratic ritual of the morning toilette set in a children's nursery (sold, Christie's London, 9 July 1999, lot 50; now in the Collection of Dr. Martin L. Cohen and Sharleen Cooper Cohen, Malibu); a pair of philosopher 'portraits' from the Paris Salon of 1746 depicting the crying Heraclitus and the laughing Democritus (Lefrançois, op. cit., pp. 242-3; sold, Christie's New York, 2 November 2000, lot 195; now in an American private collection); and the grand history picture of 1732, Andromache and Pyrrhus, illustrating an episode from Racine's tragedy (Lefrançois, op. cit., p. 146; from the Collection of Karl Lagerfeld, sold, Christie's New York, 23 May 2000, lot 35; now in a private collection).
The present painting -- an especially well-documented work that the artist prized and retained in his private collection throughout his life -- is a model of Coypel's ability to season an erudite allegory with pleasing color, graceful figures and suave execution. The subject of the painting was identified in the artist's estate sale as 'la Peinture reveillant le Genie endormi' -- Painting awakening sleeping Genius. In it, the flying, female embodiment of Painting - palette and brushes in hand - descends from the heavens through a casement window to rouse the recumbent winged youth who represents Genius. The allegorical figures burst from their setting with an arresting trompe l'oeil three-dimensionality, and a preliminary drawing for the painting (Lefrançois, op. cit., D. 53; formerly, Emile Wolfe collection, New York) suggests that Coypel intended to further heighten the painting's illusionism by installing it directly over a bed on which the winged boy would appear to be reclining. An exquisite study for the figure of Painting, executed in trois crayons on blue paper, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Lefrançois, op. cit., D. 54). Thierry Lefrançois, author of the most complete catalogue of Coypel's works, regards the present painting as characteristic of the artist's style around 1730, and compares its composition and supple paint handling to that of Hercules and Omphale (Lefrançois, op. cit, p. 134, Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich) which is signed and dated '1731'.
Lefrançois' 1994 study of Coypel's life and career (with its accompanying catalogue of his paintings, drawings, pastels and etchings) renewed interest in this fascinating artist's production and drew public attention to the extraordinary range of his achievement. It also unearthed and documented a number of major works that have subsequently come on the market, including Coypel's swaggering Self Portrait in pastel of 1734 (Lefrançois, op. cit, I. 4, acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles); the magnificent 1733 pair of trompe-l'oeil oil portraits of Jacques-André Dupille, Receveur General des Finances of Lyon, and his wife and daughter costumed for a masked ball (Lefrançois, op. cit., pp. 155-6; sold, Christie's, Monaco, 19 June 1994, lot 71; now in the Collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills); the comic genre scene Children's Games (dated 1728; Lefrançois, op. cit, p. 82), a witty burlesque of the elaborate aristocratic ritual of the morning toilette set in a children's nursery (sold, Christie's London, 9 July 1999, lot 50; now in the Collection of Dr. Martin L. Cohen and Sharleen Cooper Cohen, Malibu); a pair of philosopher 'portraits' from the Paris Salon of 1746 depicting the crying Heraclitus and the laughing Democritus (Lefrançois, op. cit., pp. 242-3; sold, Christie's New York, 2 November 2000, lot 195; now in an American private collection); and the grand history picture of 1732, Andromache and Pyrrhus, illustrating an episode from Racine's tragedy (Lefrançois, op. cit., p. 146; from the Collection of Karl Lagerfeld, sold, Christie's New York, 23 May 2000, lot 35; now in a private collection).