Master Paintings Evening Sale

Master Paintings Evening Sale

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 59. ATTRIBUTED TO CATHERINE LUSURIER | A YOUNG BOY SEATED IN A LANDSCAPE, THREE-QUARTER LENGTH.

Property from the collection of J.E. Safra

ATTRIBUTED TO CATHERINE LUSURIER | A YOUNG BOY SEATED IN A LANDSCAPE, THREE-QUARTER LENGTH

Auction Closed

January 30, 12:05 AM GMT

Estimate

150,000 - 200,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Collection of J.E. Safra

ATTRIBUTED TO CATHERINE LUSURIER

(?) 1753 - 1781 Paris

A YOUNG BOY SEATED IN A LANDSCAPE, THREE-QUARTER LENGTH


oil on canvas

21⅜ by 17⅝ in.; 54.3 by 44.9 cm.


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Please note the correct bold type heading for this lot is "Attributed to Catherine Lusurier." For updated cataloguing, please refer to the e-catalogue on Sothebys.com.

Thos. Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London;

There acquired by a Noblewoman;

From whom acquired by an anonymous collector;

Anonymous sale, Knightsbridge, Bonham’s, 3 July 1997, lot 79 (as Nicolas Bernard Lépicié);

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 30 January 1998, lot 109 (as Attributed to Lusurier);

There acquired.

Although the French artist Catherine Lusurier, who lived only until the age of 28, received great admiration during her lifetime, little is known of her biography. Fortunately, she did sign and date a handful of her paintings, which has allowed scholars to piece together her small oeuvre.  


Lusurier was the niece of the painter Hubert Drouais (1699-1767), often referred to as "Drouais père" to distinguish him from his son, Francois Hubert Drouais (1727-1775), also a painter. Indeed, by 1767 Lusurier had moved in with Drouais père as an apprentice to the artist and companion to his wife, Marie-Marguerite Lusurier. Though Drouais père died later that year, Lusurier continued to live with her aunt on Rue des Orties, and even remained in the home after Marie-Marguerite herself died.  She certainly continued to have a relationship with both Drouais fils and his own son, the artist Jean-Germain Drouais (1763-1788), as evidenced by Lusurier's beautiful and signed portrait of Jean-Germain, now in the Louvre (fig. 1). 


The stylistic influence of the three generations of Drouais painters is evident in Lusurier's paintings, as is the work of another portraitist working in Paris, Nicolas Bernard Lépicié (1735-1784). It is Lépicié's subjects that most closely align with those of Lusurier, mostly children as well as artists or philosophers. Lusurier's style, however, is more direct, even in her tender portraits of young boys, as in the present work. While the inclusion of a landscape in the background may seem unusual for Parisian portraits at the time, she did include a landscape in one of her signed works, a portrait of Charlotte-Françoise DeBure, now at Milwaukee Art Museum.1 Lusurier's rejection of over-the-top sentimentality or extra Rococo flourishes distinguishes her portraits from those of her mentors and peers; the clarity of personality in paintings like the present work certainly make them particularly appealing to the modern eye. 


We are grateful to Dr. Melissa Hyde for her assistance with the cataloguing of this lot. 


1.  Portrait of Charlotte-Françoise DeBure, 1776. Oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 24 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Bequest of Arthur & Noryne Riebs. (M1959.80)