Jean-Baptiste Le Prince Metz 1734 - 1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port, Seine-et-Marne

Possibly M. le Marquis de Poyanne, Paris, 1775;
Possibly the painting in the collection of the Prince de Chalais in 1785, when it was engraved by Helman;
Comtesse de la Ferronays, her sale, Paris, Haro & Bloche, 12 April 1897, lot 13;
Achille-Fould collection, from which sold, Paris, Hôtel Drouot (Libert Castor), 6 June 1984, lot 10;
With Stair Sainty Matthiesen Gallery, New York, from whom acquired by the present owners;
Private collection, New York.

Possibly Paris, Salon, 1775, no. 36 ('Un Négromantien');
Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library; Pittsburgh, Frick Art Museum; and New York, Frick Collection, Drawings by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince for the 'Voyage en Siberie', 17 October 1986 - 14 June 1987, no. 39;
New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen Gallery, François Boucher: His Circle and Influence, 1987, no. 67.

Possibly Explication des peintures, sculptures et gravures, de messieurs de l'Académie Royale..., Paris 1775, p. 9, no. 36;
Possibly M. Mercure, M. Terburg & M. Teniers, La lanterne magique aux Champs Elysées au Entretien des Orients Peintres sur le Salon de 1775, Paris 1775;
Possibly Entretien sur l'exposition des tableaux de l'année 1775, Paris 1775;
Possibly Mercure de France, Exposition des peintures, sculptures et gravures de messieurs de l'Académie royale de peinture en 1775, Paris 1775, p. 729;
Possibly M. le comte de la Billarderie d'Angivillier, Observations sur les ouvrages exposés au Salon du Louvre, Paris 1777;
K. Rorschach, Drawings by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince for the 'Voyage en Siberie', exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, 17 October 1986 - 4 January 1987; Pittsburgh, Frick Art Museum, 29 January - 29 March 1987; and New York, Frick Collection, 21 April - 14 June 1987, p. 35, cat. no. 39, reproduced;
M.-E. Hellyer, "Exhibition Reviews", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXIX, no. 1010, May 1987, p. 349;
C. Baker & T. Henry, The National Gallery. Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 1995, p. 377.

ENGRAVED:
Probably by Helman, in 1785 (when a painting of this composition was in the collection of the Prince de Chalais).

Although born in Metz, Le Prince travelled to Paris as a young man and was apprenticed to François Boucher, through the help of the Maréchal de Belle-Isle (1684-1761), governor of Metz.¹  Le Prince was a talented painter, draftsman and engraver, and today he is chiefly remembered for his development of the aquatint (he is believed by some to have invented the medium) and for the Russian themes in his art. Le Prince arrived in St. Petersburg in July 1757 and he travelled extensively in Russia, possibly as far as Siberia, drawing on his experiences there for his artistic output after his return to Paris at the end of 1763. Le Prince’s russeries stimulated the French public’s fascination with Russia and fed their imagination, rather like Jean-Baptiste Vanmour’s turqueries had done with Turkey some fifty years earlier.

The Russian Empire under Peter the Great (1672-1725) and his daughter Elizabeth (1709-1761) emerged as one of the great powers of Europe. The Russian military was extremely strong and in 1756 it joined France and Austria against Frederick the Great of Prussia in the Seven Years’ War. Culturally Russia had also moved forward significantly: Elizabeth opened state theatres in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, and imported French cuisine, music, art and dance. A Russian Academy of Fine Arts was established in St. Petersburg in 1758, during Le Prince’s sojourn there, and the French painter Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1715-1759) was appointed as its first director. When Le Prince returned to Paris in 1763 he came back to a city where orientalism and exoticism were in vogue and his russeries were greatly sought after. When Le Prince became a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1765, his morceau de réception was a Russian Baptism,² and in the same year he exhibited fifteen paintings at the Salon, all of them of Russian theme. What kept him most occupied after his return to France, from 1764 to 1768, were the drawings he produced to accompany the text in Abbé Jean Chappe d’Auteroche’s Voyage en Sibérie. The Abbé, an astronomer, wrote the book as an account of his travels in Russia, where he went to observe the transit of Venus across the sun at Tobolsk on 6th June 1761,³ but was more a text full of social and political commentary. The publication was heavily criticised by Catherine the Great (1729-1796), who published a bitter response in 1770 entitled Antidote, and the only praise the book received from her was for Le Prince’s illustrations.⁴  It nevertheless became the most popular book in Russia, being printed in a second edition in 1769, and being translated into English the following year.

The present painting is a supreme example of the genre in which Le Prince specialised after his return from St. Petersburg.⁵ The composition enjoyed enormous popularity, as is attested to by the existence of two other versions, both of which are signed.⁶  The girl is wearing essentially western dress, although she has tied a sash around her waist, but the young man accompanying her wears a turban; his exotic costume and headgear suggesting that this is a Russian setting. The fortune-teller, or ‘necromancer’, wears a heavily embroidered coat and both he and the humble setting in which he is shown are reminiscent of pictures by Rembrandt and his followers. Each of the three versions of this composition have laid claim to being the painting, of almost identical dimensions, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1775, where it was said to belong to the Marquis de Poyanne, along with another painting by Le Prince representing a Jealous Man.⁷  According to Abbé Chappe’s observations, necromancy was much practiced among Russians, who, he reported, were extremely superstitious. The painting’s identification with that exhibited in 1775 led Rorschach to suggest a date of execution of 1774 for the present work.

1. The Maréchal would help the artist again, writing for him a letter of introduction to the Marquis de l’Hôpital, French ambassador in St. Petersburg.
2. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. 7331; oil on canvas, 73 by 92 cm., signed and dated 1765; reproduced in Musée du Louvre. Catalogue illustré des Peintures. Ecole française XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, vol. I, Pairs 1974 p. 231.
3. For a fuller discussion of the Abbe’s book see Rorschach, “Le Prince, Chappe d’Auteroche and the Voyage en Sibérie”, under Literature, pp. 9-17.
4. “The drawings by M. LePrince are by far the best part of the work. What a pity that such elegant cuts should be allowed to ornament so paltry a work”; cited and translated by Rorschach, op. cit., p. 25.
5. Other examples include the two paintings of Le Concert Russe and La Chiromancienne sold, London, Sotheby’s, 10 July 1968, lot 21 and 22.
6. One in The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and the other in the National Gallery, London, inv. NG 5848. The three versions are of almost identical dimensions.
7. “35. Un Jaloux…. 36. Un Négromantien. Tableau de 2 pieds 6 pouces de haut, sur 2 pieds de large. Ces deux Tableaux appartiennent à M. le Marquis de Poyanne”; from Explication des peintures…, under Literature, p. 9.