Eustache Le Sueur

Mme. de Fontaine, Hôtel Lambert, 1739 (mentioned in the sale contract drawn up on 31 March 1739 between Madame de Fontaine, her brother-in-law Claude Dupin and Florent Claude, Marquis du Châtelet and his wife, Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil);
Marin Delahaye, owner of Hôtel Lambert from 1745 to 1753 (inventory catalogue 13 October 1753, no. 1378);
By whom given to his brother Marc-Antoine Delahaye de Bazinville (mentioned in Marin Delahaye's post-mortem inventory on 13 October 1753, no. 1378, Minutier Central, LVII-408);
Thence by descent until sold, Paris, Christie's, 23 June 2009, lot 88, where acquired by the present owner. 

C. Bailey, "Poussin's L'enfance de Bacchus newly identified in two eighteenth-century collections," in Mélanges en homage à Pierre Rosenberg, Paris 2001, p. 70, appendix I;
E. de Maintenant, "Redécouverte d'une oeuvre de jeunesse d'Eustache Le Sueur provenant de l'hôtel Lambert," in L'Estampille - Objet d'Art, June 2009, no. 447, pp. 26-27, reproduced;
J-C. Boyer, "Voltaire à l'hôtel Lambert, de Gomberville à Le Sueur," Revue Voltaire, no. 12, 2012, p. 147-161, repr. II and III.

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 work has recently been well restored. The canvas is lined. The surface is even with a nice texture. The cracking is very slightly raised, but certainly not in a noticeably distracting way. The paint layer is in very good state. It is almost completely un-abraded. The color is very strong throughout. The condition seems to be very good within the figure herself, and the condition also seems to be very good in the softer colors of the cello. The only area where there is a slight concentration of retouches is above and around the breasts. The small restorations here may suggest that modesty was a concern at some point in the history of this work. This area may have been covered and then uncovered again, creating very slight abrasion. The cracking in the dark wing on the right has probably received retouches, and there may also be some retouching to the glazes in this area. There is a strong pentiment above the wing on the left side that has become more visible over time, but this is interesting without being a distraction. The condition seems to be very good in the red curtain behind. The work is in beautiful condition and should be hung as is.
"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."

This elegant Allegory of Poetry is a masterpiece by the young Eustache Le Sueur, exhibiting both the influence of his master, Simon Vouet, as well as the development of his own more lyrical and sensual style.  Jean-Claude Boyer dated the work stylistically to the early 1640s, at the end of Le Sueur’s tenure in Vouet’s studio and just as his independent reputation in Paris was beginning to develop.  Rediscovered in 2009 after having been in the same family collection for generations and unknown to scholars, the painting was found to have hung at the celebrated Hôtel Lambert in the eighteenth century, and was likely commissioned directly from Le Sueur by the Lambert family to decorate their residence.

The iconic and grand Hôtel Lambert sits at the eastern tip of the Ile Saint-Louis on the river Seine in Paris (fig. 1).  Built between 1640 and 1644, it was designed by the architect Louis Le Vau for the financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert; after Lambert's death in December 1644, only about eight months after moving into the residence, his younger brother Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny inherited the property and continued with the construction.  It was Nicolas who commissioned most of the magnificent interior decoration, executed by the most famous French painters of the time, including Charles Le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur (fig. 2).

Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny died in 1692, and the residence passed by descent in his family until 1729.  After that, it belonged to various owners, including the Marquise du Châtelet, Voltaire’s mistress, who sold it in 1745 to Marin Delahaye.  Upon Marin Delahaye’s death in 1753, his brother Marc-Antoine Delahaye de Bazinville inherited the residence, and it is his direct descendants who sold the Allegory of Poetry in 2009.

The painting first appears in an inventory at the Hôtel Lambert in 1739, on a document annexed to a deed of sale for the residence, where it is listed as an overdoor in the “Grand Cabinet” of the residence.  While there are no records of the painting before this date, the earlier inventories of the Hôtel do not include the paintings that were inserted into elements of the décor, such as paneling, overdoors and ceilings.  Le Sueur completed a commission of a suite of paintings decorating the “Cabinet de l’Amour” in 1646-47, and it is therefore likely that the Allegory of Poetry was indeed originally painted for the Hôtel Lambert, owned at that time by Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny.  

The painting was not included in the posthumous sale of Marin Delahaye’s paintings held in 1754, nor in his widow's sale in 1778, but was kept for his brother Marc-Antoine Delahaye de Bazinville.  It was subsequently inherited by his son, who brought it first to the Hôtel Fieubet, near the Ile Saint-Louis but on the right bank, and then in 1813 to a castle near Paris, where it was rediscovered almost two centuries later.  It was unknown to Alain Mérot upon the publication of his 1987 catalogue raisonné of the artist, but he has subsequently endorsed its attribution.  

Le Sueur was one of the most important painters of seventeenth-century France.  A contemporary of Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun, he was one of the founders of French Classicism. Somewhat unusually for a French artist of his talents, he never left Paris for a tour of Italy but in 1632 was accepted into the studio of Simon Vouet, who had returned from Rome in 1627.  Le Sueur embraced the richness and sensuality of Vouet’s paintings, but also developed a classical elegance and harmony in his work, likely influenced by Raphael’s prints as well as the work of Nicolas Poussin, who was in Paris from 1640-42.  By the 1640s, Le Sueur was fully established as one of the leading painters in Paris.  In 1648 he was one of the twelve founding members of the Académie royale de peinture and he was appointed Peintre Ordinaire du Roi in 1649. His illustrious career was unfortunately short, as he died in 1655 at the age of just thirty eight.  

We are grateful to Jean-Claude Boyer for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.