Alexandre-François Desportes

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 16 April 1948, lot 113, bought by Koetser;
With L. Koetser Gallery, London;
Presumably acquired from the above by Archibal Arrol Stuart Black (d.1967), Highfield Park, Hants;
Inherited from the above and thence by descent to the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an independent expert and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has an early stretcher and lining. The stretcher is still strong and was made slightly larger than the original, with the left taking edge opened out, and an even narrow band of filling along the base edge. The other two edges have some old repairs mainly towards the upper right corner along the top edge and near the lower right corner down the right side. There is a certain amount of fairly recent retouching along all the edges. The lining was primed behind and was probably from the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. It is slightly uneven now and there are one or two little patches of slightly raised craquelure near the centre, in some of the darks such as at the edge of the head of the mallard and in the central background. There is one old three cornered tear at the lower left, up the neck of the woodcock and along the line of the ledge, about two inches by two inches. This has been well integrated and retouched. Otherwise there is little retouching in the main body of the painting, one or two small marks touched out, one in the lower centre of the background and two brief narrow parallel slanting scratches in the furthest peach to the right and its leaf also retouched. The entire centre is beautifully unworn, with the rich precise brushwork in the plumage of the birds remarkably intact, as is the fruit and detail though out. There has clearly always been care taken over the centuries and minimal intrusion near the fine surface of the paint. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

As a young man Desportes first studied in  Paris from 1674-78 with the ageing Flemish animalier Nicasius Bernaerts. In 1699 he was réçu into the Académie Royale as an animal painter, and received his first commission from Louis XIV the following year, the beginning of a period of royal patronage which was to last nearly fifty years. Appointed painter to the Royal Hunt, he continued to work for Louis XV, and among his many commissions he worked for the royal châteaux at Anet, Choisy, and Compiègne, for the Duchesse de Berry's hunting lodge at the Château de la Muette in the Bois-de-Boulogne and for Louis-Henri, Duc de Bourbon, at Chantilly. In 1704 he was made Conseiller at the Academie and exhibited frequently at the Paris Salon until 1742.

Desportes was the first great French painter to specialise in animal and hunting subjects, and together with his successor Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) became the most important and influential exponent of the genre in his day. His realistic and carefully observed style owes more to the Flemish traditon in which he trained than to the lighter rococo style favoured by Oudry, and the realism of his art is recorded to have greatly impressed Louis XIV. Desportes was an exact observer and made a large number of studies of animals, birds and flowers from the life. Around 1700 or shortly afterwards, he began to paint trophies of the hunt and dead game arranged with fruit and flowers and vegetables on tables or in landscape settings, of which this painting is a superb example. The combination of peaches and plums, arranged in baskets or, as here, in porcelain bowls, was evidently a favourite motif, for they recur in many of his works in this vein. The baroque curtain and the ordered arrangement of the objects suggests that this may be one of Desportes'  earlier stil lifes, perhaps from the second decade of the 18th century, for it still clearly recalls Flemish and Dutch models as well as the work of his fellow French painters such as Pierre Dupuis or Louise Moillon from over half a century before.  The handling of the mallard and the arrangement of the fruit in a porcelain bowl can, for example, be compared to a Still life of game with plums and peaches of 1714 sold in these Rooms on 8 July 1987, lot 86, the Still life with game and peaches of 1716 now in Karlsruhe, or the pair of great hunting still lifes of 1712 today in the Musée du Louvre ¹. In works such as this, with their combination of Flemish realism and brilliant colours and French classical principles, Desportes was to provide an immensely influential transition from the late Baroque to the Rococo.

We are grateful to M. Pierre Jacky for confirming the attribution to Desportes, following first hand examination of the original. This picture will be included in his forthcoming catalogue of the paintings of Alexandre-François Desportes.

 

1. For which see M. and F. Faré, La vie silencieuse en France. La nature morte au XVIIe Siècle, Paris 1976, pp. 68-70, figs. 98 and 101.