An actress dressed as a gardener holding a basket of flowers; and An actor wearing a ruff

Details

Jean-Jacques Spoede (Antwerp 1680-1757 Paris)
An actress dressed as a gardener holding a basket of flowers; and An actor wearing a ruff
red chalk
10 7/8 x 7 1/8 in. (27.5 x 18.2 cm.)
2

Literature

M. Eidelberg, 'Watteau and Gillot: A point of contact', The Burlington Magazine, CXV, no. 841, April 1973, pp. 232, 235, fig. 53 (as by Claude Gillot).
M. Eidelberg, 'Watteau in the atelier of Gillot' in Antoine Watteau (1684-1721): le peintre, son temps et sa légende, Paris and Geneva, 1987, pp. 47-49, fig. 9 (as by Claude Gillot).
P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1724: catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, 1996, III, p. 1150, under no. R2.
M. Eidelberg, 'Jean Jacques Spoede, Watteau's 'Special Friend'', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, CXXXVI, no. 1582, November 2000, p. 195, nts. 42 and 43.
J. Tonkovich, Claude Gillot and the theater, with a catalogue of drawings, unpubl. Ph.D, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2002, pp. 22, 58-60, 383, 401-2, 407-8, nos. R28, R32, figs. 149, 153.

Exhibited

Nishinomiya City, Otani Memorial Art Museum. Exposition Rococo: poésie et rêve de la peinture française au XVIIIe siècle, 1978, no. 1 (as by Antoine Watteau).

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Lot Essay

This pair of drawings has had a circuitous attribution history, although most recently they have been convincingly been attributed to Spoede, a Flemish artist and art dealer who was also a student of Watteau's in Paris. They are thought to be part of a group of at least nineteen sheets after original (now lost) drawings by Claude Gillot (1673-1722). The female gardener appears on a sheet of twelve figure studies formerly with Gallerie Cailleux, Paris that has been variously attributed to Pierre Quillard (1704-1773) and an anonymous member of Gillot's studio (Tonkovich, op. cit., p. 623, fig. 137). These pastoral characters derive from the French stage.

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