Jean-Étienne Liotard

Jacques et Raymond de Saussure, Geneva (inscribed in pen and brown ink on the old backing board, now lost: Dessin de Liotard-Portrait d'Inconnu/le meme se trouve chez M. Charles Sarasin/Proprieté de Jacques et Raymond de Saussure);
sale, London, Sotheby's, 12 January 1994, lot 107 (as Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle);
with Jean-Luc Baroni, London, An Exhibition of Master Drawings, 1994, no. 39, reproduced;
Private collection, USA

N. S. Trivas, Jean-Étienne Liotard: peintures pastes et dessins, unpublished manuscript catalogue, 1936, under no. FA 07 (as Jean-Michel Liotard);
A. de Herdt, Dessins de Liotard, exhib. cat., Geneva, Musèe d'art et d'histoire, and Paris, Musèe du Louvre, 1992, p. 232, under no. 126;
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, and London, Royal Academy of Arts, Jean-Etienne Liotard, exhib. cat., 2015-16, p. 208, under no. 70

Hinged at the top. Laid down on japan paper. At the top margin in the center a small repair. The tip of the right corner made up as the one of the left bottom corner. A tiny nick at the bottom margin not noticeable. A repaired tear to the right end side, in the center from the margin to below the sitter's stick, at the height of the left arm. The drawing was slightly cleaned in the past. Sold mounted and framed in an old carved and gilded frame.
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The subject of this exquisite and delicately drawn portrait by Liotard, Count Jean Diodati (1732-1807) was a member of an illustrious Geneva family of Italian origin.  It is one of three autograph versions, with small differences, the other two of which, also in private collections, have been dated by Anne de Herdt to circa 1763-1770.  One version, formerly in the collection of Aimé Martinet, in Geneva, was included in the important exhibition of Liotard’s drawings held in Geneva and Paris in 1992.¹  The other version, currently on view in the Liotard exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, has descended to its present owners directly from the sitter.²  Trivas, in his unpublished manuscript, Jean-Étienne Liotard: peintures pastels et dessins, now in the Archives of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, also mentions the present portrait of Diodati, with its provenance of Jacques et Raymond de Saussure, descendants of an old 18^th-century Geneva family, in which the portrait remained until it was sold in 1994.  Although Trivas, writing in 1936, wrongly believed that all three versions of the portrait could be the work of Jean-Étienne’s brother Jean-Michel Liotard, Anne de Herdt studied the two other versions in connection with her 1992 exhibition, publishing them both as autograph, and also concluded that the present sheet, which came to light soon afterwards, in 1994, is the work of Jean-Étienne Liotard himself.³  Marcel Roethlisberger, who has recently studied the present drawing in original, has also kindly confirmed the attribution to Liotard. 

In a letter to the previous owner, Anne de Herdt has emphasized that the artist often made multiple, and interchangeable, versions of his portraits, as she explained in her 1992 entry for the portrait of Dr. Théodore Tronchin, of which two drawn versions are known: 'Liotard s'astreignait à ce travail méticuleux afin qu'aucun des deux collectionneurs ne puisse dire à l'autre qu'il était seul à posséder l'original' (Liotard forced himself to work so meticulously, so that neither of the two collectors could say to the other that he was the only one to own the original).⁴  The present drawing appears to be more delicately finished than the version exhibited in 1992, and differs from the version currently on view in London, which is also slightly smaller than this, in that here Count Diodati holds the stick at a different angle. Moreover the presence here of the very distinctive and unusual technical device that Liotard typically employed in his chalk drawings of this type to heighten the sense of depth and luminosity is very significant. This technique involved tracing the outlines of the figure on the verso in black chalk, and filling in areas of the figure with blocks of strong red and black, possibly moistened pastel, allowing the colours to show through to the recto, subtly modifying the tonality of the page. While the principle of this technique derives from the artist’s training as a miniaturist and enameller, Liotard seems to have been characteristically innovative and experimental in the way that he applied it to the rather different medium of drawing.  

Liotard worked and excelled in a range of media and in his portraits, including his pastels, he achieves an unparalleled truthfulness that gives his work such a modern sensibility.  In this outstanding portrait, even although Diodati is studied in profile, Liotard has succeeded in conveying the sitter’s expression with immense psychological insight.  Diodati was most probably introduced to Liotard through the Tronchin family, with whom the artist had a close relationship throughout his life.  Diodati’s mother was Anne Diodati-Tronchin, his maternal grandparents were Jean and Anne Tronchin-Molenes, and he married Marie-Elisabeth Tronchin, the daughter of Dr. Théodore Tronchin, who was portrayed by Liotard on more than one occasion and in various media.⁵   

^1. A. de Herdt, op. cit., p. 232, no. 126, reproduced and p. 287, nos. 153-154

^2. Jean-Etienne Liotard, exhib. cat., loc. cit.

^3. Letter to the previous owner, dated 15 February 1994

^4. A. de Herdt, op. cit., p. 228

^5. M. Roethlisberger and R. Loche, Liotard, Doornspijk 2008, vol. I, no. 416, reproduced vol. II, figs. 597-601