Lot 85
  • 85

Jean Antoine Watteau

Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
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Description

  • Jean Antoine Watteau
  • Study of two Soldiers, one kneeling, one lying down
  • Red chalk within black ink framing lines;
    bears inscription lower left in brown ink: Vateau
  • 5 x 6 inches

Provenance

'Monsieur F,'
his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 16 March 1863, lot 127;
Jean Gigoux (1806-1894),
his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 21-23 January 1873, lot 293;
Camille Groult (1837-1908), Paris,
by descent to his son, Jean Groult (1868-1951),
and to his grandson Pierre Bordeaux-Groult (1916-2007), 
from whom acquired by the present owner in 1983

Exhibited

New York, The Frick Collection, Watteau and His World:  French Drawing from 1700 to 1750, 1999-2000, no. 4

Literature

E. de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau, Paris 1875, p. 254, nos. 430 & 431;
K.T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau, Catalogue complet de son Oeuvre Dessiné, 2 vols., Paris 1957, vol. I, p. 37, no. 256, reproduced fig. 256;
J. Cailleux, 'Four Studies of Soldiers by Watteau, an Essay on the Chronology of Military Subjects,' Burlington Magazine, vol. CI, nos. 678-679, September-October 1959, non-paginated supplement; also cited in Appendix;
M. Cormack, The Drawings of Watteau, London, New York, Sydney and Toronto 1970, p. 12;
D. Eckardt, Antoine Watteau, Berlin 1973, under no. 4, reproduced;
Y. Zolotov et al., Antoine Watteau: Catalogues Raisonnés of the Paintings and Drawings in Russian Museums, St Petersburg 1973, p. 131, under 1, reproduced p. 132;
D. Posner, Antoine Watteau, New York 1984, pp. 33, 40 and 279, nos. 37 and 43;
M. Roland Michel, Watteau, un artiste au XVIIIe siècle, London and Paris 1984, pp. 167 & 250;
Watteau, exhib. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and elsewhere, 1984-85, p. 256, under no. P6 , reproduced p. 256, fig. 2;
Y. Zolotov, Antoine Watteau: Paintings and Drawings from Soviet Museums, St Petersburg 1985, p. 103, under nos. 17 and 21, reproduced, p. 103;
M.M. Grasselli, 'The Drawings of Antoine Watteau:  Stylistic Development and Problems of Chronology', (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Havard University), 1987, vol. I, pp. 90-92, vol. II, p. 443, no. 31, reproduced, vol. III, fig. 70;
P. Rosenberg and L-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau 1684-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, 3 vols., Milan 1996, vol. I, p. 104, no. 66, reproduced, p. 105;
Y. Zolotov et al., Watteau, Bournemouth and St. Petersburg 1996, p. 107, reproduced, p. 106;
M.M. Grasselli, 'Reviews:  Pierre Rosenberg and Louis Antoine Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721', Master Drawings, vol. XXXIX, no. 3, Autumn 2001, p. 314;
C. Hattori, 'Passeports délivrés à des artistes au XVIIIe siècle:  à Watteau, à Oudry et à quelques autres', Les Cahiers d'Histoire de l'art, no. 2, 2004, p. 31, note 13;
I. Kuznetsova & E. Sharnova, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Painting Collection, France, 16th-first half 19th Century, Moscow 2005, p. 52;
Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, exhib. cat., Sarasota, Florida, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 2006-08, p. 189, note 6, under no. 62;
G. Glorieux, Watteau, Paris 2011, pp. 92, 373, note 99, reproduced p. 92, fig. 61


Condition

Laid down. Light staining around edges of the sheet. A more prominent brown stain located near the upper right corner. Brown ink stain at the lower margin over some of the black ink framing line. Red chalk remains strong. Sold in carved and gilded frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Executed with verve and spontaneity, these two studies of soldiers are, as Margaret Morgan Grasselli has noted, larger in scale and drawn with greater assurance than Watteau's earliest studies, which are still strongly influenced by the style of his teacher, Claude Gillot.1  Both these figures appear in Watteau's painting, The Bivouac ('Camp volant', Moscow, Pushkin Museum), which was commissioned by the print dealer Pierre Sirois, and almost certainly executed at the beginning of 1710.2  Jean de Julienne noted that Watteau made a number of studies, from life, of soldiers and their camps during a visit to his native Valenciennes in 1709-10, and it is highly likely that the present sheet dates from that trip.In fact, a recently discovered passport, issued to Watteau on 3 September 1710, which granted him permission to travel to Valenciennes for one month, almost certainly defines much more precisely the moment when he made this and the related drawings.4  A very comparable sheet of studies of soldiers is in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.5

The two studies on this sheet were engraved, separately, by Jean Audran, and these prints were included as plates 75 and 76 in the seminal two-volume compendium of prints after the drawings of Watteau, Les Figures de differents caractères, which Jean de Jullienne had published between 1726 and 1728.  A counterproof of the upper figure, now in a Paris private collection, was formerly in the 'Album Groult,' a volume of more than 500 drawings, most of them by Jean-Baptiste Pater, which was previously in the same collection as the present drawing before it was sold and dismembered in 1941. 

1.  loc. cit., 1987

2.  See Watteau, exh. cat., Washington, 1984, no. P6   

3.  P. Rosenberg, 'Watteau dessinateur,' Revue de l'Art, 69, 1985, pp. 9 and 14. 

4.  C. Hattori, loc. cit.

5.  Rosenberg-Prat, op. cit., no. 67