Jean-Baptiste Marie PIERRE (Paris, 1714 - 1789)
The Rape of Europa
Paper mounted on canvas and enlarged in the 19th century
Frame: carved and gilded oak from the Louis XV period by Le Brun (restoration)
41,7 x 43 cm (enlarged 43,1 x 50 cm)
Provenance
- Collection of Armand-Pierre-François de Chastre de Billy.
- His sale, Paris, November 16, 1784 and dj. ss. (here the 16th), part of n° 52, sold 132 livres.
- Louis-Gabriel, marquis de Véri (1722-1785).
- His sale, Paris, December 12, 1785 and dj. ss., part of n° 12, sold 150 livres.
- Collection M. B*** [Bellanger].
- His sale, Paris, March 17, 1788 and dj. ss., part of n° 27, sold 48 livres.
- Claude-François Paillard, said Duval.
- His sale, Paris, May 10, 1810, part of n° 80.
Bibliography :
N. Lesur and O. Aaron, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, 1714-1789, Premier peintre du roi, Paris, Arthena, 2009, p. 284.
Related works:
- A sketch at the Sanct Lucas Gallery in Vienna in 2012 (paper marouflaged on canvas H. 0.428; W. 0.415 m).
- Possibly a lost sketch or a composition with variants, from which two copies were made that offer some variants with our painting as with the final carton. The first one was sold in Paris, Sotheby's, June 27, 2002, n° 28, reproduced in colors in the catalog, as Pierre (canvas ; H. 0,490 ; W. 0,585 m). The second one was sold in Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Mes Chayette-Cheval, June 12, 2008, n° 12 (canvas; H. 0,600 ; W. 0,585 m).
- The final tapestry card (Lesur and Aaron, op. cit., 2009, cat. *P. 195 lost). H. 3.250; W. 3.250 m. Most likely destroyed in the Arras museum during the First World War.
- The weaving of the first tapestry was completed by Cozette on November 13, 1759, and the tapestry will appear in the company room of the Hôtel de Ménars. The Abduction of Europa was woven ten times between 1758 and 1792. A copy is kept in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Fondation Ephrussi de Rothschild, grand salon des tapisseries des Gobelins et de Beauvais.
In 1756, King Louis XV commissioned a suite of tapestries from the Gobelins on the theme of the Loves of the Gods, to be given as a customary gift to his Director General of Buildings, the Marquis de Marigny. Pierre was commissioned to paint an Abduction of Europa. The suite also includes Neptune and Amymone by Carle Van Loo (Nice, Musée Chéret), The Forges of Vulcan by François Boucher (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and The Abduction of Proserpine" by Joseph-Marie Vien (Grenoble, Musée des Beaux-Arts). This commission is all the more emblematic of Louis XV's patronage as the four artists became successively First Painter to the King. The work, formerly kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras, was destroyed during the First World War.
Absent from the Salon since his success in 1751, Pierre could not fail to exhibit his carton in 1757. The critics were enthusiastic. Fréron said that: "the composition is beautiful & the subject is superbly rendered; groups well linked, a true color and yet very attractive, a clever distribution of lights, a beautiful intelligence of reflections, a wide, easy and pure execution, charming heads painted with freshness; in a word, everything that constitutes a beautiful painting is gathered in this one".
Our paper is the second sketch that we can relate to the composition for the Gobelins. The first one (private collection), also painted on paper pasted on canvas, is of the same dimensions. Nevertheless, the composition is very different from our sketch since Europe is represented on the water, like the painting of the same subject that the painter made in 1750 for his friend Claude-Henri Watelet (Dallas, Museum of Art). Our work is closer to the final execution for the factory and allows us to understand the development of one of the most important compositions of the artist's career.
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