Franz Christoph Janneck

Acquired by a forebear of the present owner, probably in the 1870s;
Thence by direct descent.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a perfectly flat strong copper panel, without any dents. There are just a few small marks at the edges rubbed by the frame, but elsewhere throughout the immaculate condition suggests that it may be virtually untouched. One or two minute old retouchings in the upper sky are the only trace of any restoration, and the fine detail and flow of the paint throughout is perfectly preserved beneath the mellow but still translucent varnish, which may never have been disturbed. A few places have a slightly crackled surface, presumably connected to the preparation, including the neck of the lover on the left, a patch in the central woodland background and the back of the page at lower left, where one or two little flakes may possibly be raised. However the paint overall is in exceptionally perfect condition. 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."

Franz Christoph Janneck was born in Graz in 1703 but had established himself in Vienna by the 1730s. In 1740 he studied at the Viennese Academy, later holding the post of assessor there from 1752 until 1758. Like his friend Johann Georg Platzer, his oeuvre consists of cabinet pictures of conversation pieces, as well as a smaller number of landscapes and religious subjects. These were often painted on polished copper with an exceptional degree of finish and detail. His fêtes galantes such as the present work are considered his finest achievements and remain among the greatest examples of the Austrian rococo.

Although few of Janneck's fêtes galantes are dated, the present copper, unseen for over a century, is most likely a mature work from the 1740s or '50s: compare, for example, the pair of Elegant companies in interiors, signed and dated 1752, sold in these Rooms, 3 July 1991, lot 12. In design and its unusally high degree of finish, the present painting strongly recalls another signed copper of similar subject sold in these Rooms, 22 April 2004, lot 101 (fig. 1), and the fact that both paintings share the same dimensions would suggest that they may originally have been pendants. The composition is also very similar to another copper of smaller size (34.5 by 42 cm.), one of a pair of pictures formerly with Newhouse Galleries in New York, in which the elegant figures are similarly disposed around a table before a distant palace or villa, with a page boy also collecting water from a fountain in the lower left foreground. The extraordinary attention to detail and the beautifully rendered surface in all these works clearly demonstrate Janneck's debt to the Leiden fijnschilders of the 17th and early 18th century.