A seated woman holding a fan

Details

Jean-Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes 1684-1721 Nogent-sur-Marne)
A seated woman holding a fan
red chalk, the lower right corner made up
4 x 2½ in. (10.1 x 6.5 cm.)

Provenance

with Galérie Cailleux, Paris (stamp not in Lugt).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 28 January 1999, lot 116.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, Paris, 10 April 2008, lot 69.

Literature

K.T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau. catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessiné, Paris, 1957, I, no. 63, ill.
M. Roland Michel, Watteau. Un artiste au XVIIIe siècle, Paris and London, 1984, p. 75, fig. 41.
M. Morgan Grasselli, The Drawings of Antoine Watteau, Stylistic Development and Problems of Chronology, PhD thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1987, p. 117, fig. 100.
P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau. 1684-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, 1996, I, no. 32, ill.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

A counterproof of this drawing, dated around 1709-10, is in the National-museum, Stockholm (inv. NM 2827/1863; Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., fig. 32a). This counterproof was bought directly from Watteau by count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770) in 1715 and demonstrates that the present drawing was originally larger, as it includes two further studies of women: one seated with an open fan, another standing. The latter was used by the artist in his painting Actors on a fairground in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (P. Rosenberg et al., Watteau 1684-1721, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art and elsewhere, 1984, no. 10).

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