An elegant seated lady and a standing woman pouring a jug (recto); A seated woman (verso)

Details

JEAN-BAPTISTE PATER (VALENCIENNES 1695-1736 PARIS)
An elegant seated lady and a standing woman pouring a jug (recto); A seated woman (verso)
with number ‘67’
red chalk (recto), red chalk counterproof (verso)
19.3 x 22.6 cm (7 3⁄4 x 8 7⁄8 in.)

Provenance

Camille Groult, Paris (1832-1908); Hôtel Drouot, 19 December 1941, Paris, lot 55.
with Galerie Cailleux, Paris (Le Dessin français de Watteau à Prud’hon, 1951, no. 102, ill.)
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27 November 1986, lot 19.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 1st July 1991, lot 46.
with Kate de Rothschild, London, 1988 (Master Drawings, 1550-1850, New York, London, 1988, no. 20).
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 24 January 2008, lot 80.
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 24 January 2017, lot 97.

Literature

F. Raymond, L'Œuvre dessiné de Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695-1736) dans les principales collections publiques françaises, unpublished Mémoire de maîtrise, Lille, Charles-de-Gaulle University, 2002, I, p. 102.
F. Raymond, La Fortune critique de Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695-1736) et son œuvre dessiné, Paris, 2005, fig. 165 (unpublished).

Exhibited

New York, The Frick Collection, Watteau and his world. French Drawings from 1700-1750, 1999, no. 73, ill. (entry by A. Wintermute)

Special notice

This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice. Christie’s has a direct financial interest in this lot. Christie’s has guaranteed to the seller that whatever the outcome of the auction, the seller will receive a minimum sale price for the work. This is known as a minimum price guarantee.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The lady on the left is possibly a study for one of the central figures in Pater's picture Une fête galante, Le repos dans un parc, formerly in the collection of the Earl of Pembroke and now in the City Art Museum, Saint Louis. Comparable drawings of two female figures by Pater are in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (inv. F.I. 95; P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, 1996, III, no. R728) and in the Louvre (inv. no. 27546; R. Bacou, Dessins français du XVIIIe siècle de Watteau à Lemoyne, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1987, no. 146, ill.).
The numbering on this drawing indicates that it comes from an album commonly called ‘Groult’ which originally contained more than 500 sheets by Pater and Watteau (see P. Rosenberg, ‘L'album Groult, dit aussi album Lepeltier’, in Preussen: die Kunst und das Individuum. Beitrage gewidmet Helmut Borsch-Supan, Berlin, 2003, pp. 29-39).

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