Nicolas-Henry Jeaurat de Bertry

A. Collection, Paris;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Palais d'Orsay, 7 December 1979, lot 32;
De Beistegui collection, Château de Groussay, Montfort l'Amaury;
Their sale, Paris, Sotheby's and Poulain, Le Fur, sale held at Château de Groussay, Montfort l'Amaury, 3 June 1999, lot 540;
There purchased by the present collector.

M. and F. Faré, La Vie Silencieuse en France, La Nature Morte au XVIIe siècle, Fribourg 1976, p. 196, reproduced fig. 295.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has an old lining which is still adequately supporting the surface. The paint layer is clean and while there may be a couple of retouches to the surface in the copper bowl and in the basket, essentially this is a picture which seems to be more or less un-retouched. There is a tear in the canvas in the lower center beneath the fish which is un-retouched but apart from some very slight thinness to the paint layer in the white table cloth, the condition overall seems to be very good indeed. The paint layer does seem to be dirty and the varnish is uneven. We would encourage a cleaning which will reveal an old restoration in the upper right background above the cheese and another also in the background above the fish, although no restorations are obviously visible under ultraviolet light. The remainder of the painting would seem to be very well preserved.
"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."

Jeaurat de Bertry was born in Paris in the generation following Jean-Baptiste Chardin and the influence of that master on his work is unmistakable, especially in the younger artist's tables de cuisine or kitchen still lifes.  This painting is a particularly fine and large scale example of that genre.  A pupil of his uncle Etienne Jeaurat, who was a professor at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Jeaurat de Bertry, somewhat unusually, was both nominated and accepted into the Académie on the same day, 31 January 1756.  His two reception pieces were a Still Life of Kitchen Utensils and a Still Life of Military Trophies (now in the Ecole des Beaus-Arts, Paris and the Musée de Fontainebleau respectively).  Only five years later, in 1761, he was named peintre de la Reine to Queen Marie Leczinska, consort of Louis XV, and set up residence in Versailles where he remained until her death in 1768.  In his later career, Jeaurat de Bertry turned to portraiture and landscape painting, but it is for his considerable skill as a still life painter that he is best known today.