Jacques Rigaud

Bears the mounter's mark of Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711-1786), Paris (L.1119);

Jean Bloch;

Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 21 May 1957, lot 16u;

With J. Kugel, Paris, 1996;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 3 July 2007, lot 127(ii);

With Galerie Éric Coatalem, Paris;

Where acquired by the present owner.

Engraved:

By the artist, for his Vues des bosquets des jardins de Versailles, in the Maisons royales de France, 1730, pl. 12

Our knowledge of the exact appearance of the lavish royal palaces of King Louis XV (1710-1774), and of the magnificent parks and gardens that surrounded them, is due more than anything else to a remarkable series of 130 superb prints, engraved by Jacques Rigaud after his own exquisite preparatory drawings. The series was published early in the King’s reign, circa 1730. Versailles is represented by 24 plates, more than any other palace; the other residences depicted include famous landmarks such as the Tuileries, the Luxembourg and Monceaux palaces in Paris, the châteaux of Marly, Meudon, Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, Vincennes, Choisy, Saint-Cloud, Sceaux, Chantilly, Berny, Anet and Clagny near the capital, and the royal residencies of Chambord, Blois and Amboise in the province of the Touraine. 

The Versailles views are divided into two sections, entitled Diverses vues du château de Versailles and Vue des bosquets du Jardin de Versailles; the present, highly finished, large scale drawing belongs to the latter group. The exceptionally elaborate gardens that are recorded in the drawings and prints of this series are essentially those created for Louis XV’s grandfather, Louis XIV (1638-1715), by the great royal gardener, André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), as part of grandiose schemes involving the architecture of Louis Le Vau, Francois Mansart and Jules Hardouin-Mansart, a sculptural programme masterminded by Charles Le Brun, as well as a series of engineering and waterworks and elaborate complexes of fountains by the Francine brothers. Indeed, so numerous were the fountains – there were in total some 2,400 of them – that the available water supply from the Seine simply could not power them all at the same time, so the King would show visitors around the gardens along a predetermined route, and gangs of workers would run ahead and behind, turning the fountains on and off as needed.    

Within the whole scheme, the bosquets, which were artificial glades set with extravagant ensembles of fountains, situated to the west of the Château, were a celebrated feature. In this particularly refined and visually exciting drawing, we see one of the most elaborate constructions in all the gardens, the bosquet of the Arc de Triomphe, located on the Parterre du Nord. This bosquet was laid out between 1677 and 1684; of the numerous sculptural groups that were originally located here, however, only the one representing France Triumphing over Spain and The Empire (1682-3), by Jean-Baptiste Tuby, Antoine Coysevox and Jacques Prou, still remains in situ. 

How Jacques Rigaud, a native of Marseilles, came to be entrusted with the commission for the extraordinary series of views of Les Maisons Royales de France remains uncertain, but his magnificent drawings and the extremely popular prints that he himself made from them cemented his reputation, ensuring that other projects followed. In 1733, the artist was invited to make fourteen drawings for prints of the gardens at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire (these drawings are now in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and a similar series of eight views of Lord Burlington’s equally celebrated gardens at Chiswick House are in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth. 

All the same, Rigaud’s reputation as an artist rests principally on his superb drawings of monuments at Versailles and the other French royal residences and gardens, of which the present drawing is a particularly refined and technically accomplished example.