Old Master and British Works on Paper

Old Master and British Works on Paper

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 229. Two studies of cats: A) Le chat emmailloté B) Le chat étendu.

Works from the Collection of Jean Hart Kislak

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Two studies of cats: A) Le chat emmailloté B) Le chat étendu

Lot Closed

January 25, 07:29 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris

Two studies of cats:

A) Le chat emmailloté

B) Le chat étendu


Both red chalk, mounted together;

inscribed in a modern hand on the mount: Les chats de Fragonard

A) 167 by 157 mm; 6½ by 6¼ in.

B) 98 by 164 mm; 3⅞ by 6½ in.

Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 30 March 1874, lot 74;
Baron de Schwiter;
sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 14 June 1948, lot 5;
sale, Paris, Palais Galliéra, 1962, lot 1331;
sale, New York, Christie's, 28 January 1999, lot 143
A. Ananoff, L'oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paris 1970, III, no. 1331-2

The attribution was confirmed by Eunice Williams at the time of the 1999 sale.


Fragonard made several paintings showing cats or dogs dressed in human clothes, including L'éducation fait tout, in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (inv. MASP.00056), and the Chat émmailloté, known only through a print and a related drawing formerly in the Edmond de Rothschild collection.1 Although the animals being educated in the former painting are dogs, rather than cats, their positioning and 'costume' are rather similar to those seen in the first, upright drawing in the present lot.


  1. See Fragonard, exh. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 1987, pp. 487-8, no. 239 and fig. 1