Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin

Collection Jean-Louis-Gabriel-Basile de Beccarie de Pavie, marquis de Fourquevaux (1726-après 1789), château de Fourquevaux;

Collection Comte de Saint-Romain, in 1931;

Collection Georges Ryaux, Paris;

Collection Elisabeth Ryaux, Paris, in 1958;

His sale, Paris, Palais d'Orsay, 24 October 1979, lot 98; 

Anonymous sale, M^e Solanet, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 4 December 1986, lot 15;

Collection Hélène and Roland Lacroix, France;

By descent to the present owner.

E. Dacier, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Peintre, dessinateur et graveur (1724-1780) : Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Paris and Brussels 1931, p. 29, no. 139 (titled Réunion champêtre);

P. Berthelot and G. Brunon-Guardia, 'Notice', in Antiquarian, no. 16, January 1931, pp. 52 and 72;

J. Mathey, 'Three Paintings by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 92, no. 565, April 1950, pp. 106-109, fig. 16;

K. de Beaumont, Reconsidering Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724-1780): The Background for His Scenes of Paris, PhD, New York University, 1998, pp. 252 and 688, fig. 117.

Probably Toulouse, Salon de l'Académie royale, 1783, no. 155 (titled Le Concert espagnol);

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, L’exposition internationale du cadre du XVe au XXe siècle, April 1931, no. 235 (as per a label on the reverse);

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Cinq siècles d'art français, August-November 1958, no. 89;

New York, The Frick Collection, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724-1780), October 2007-January 2008, no. 39.

Although better-known as a draughtsman and chronicler of Paris life in the second half of the eighteenth century, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin was nonetheless a painter of undoubted talent and great originality. The Poet’s Reward, which has not been seen on the art market for forty years, but which was shown at the artist’s major retrospective exhibition in New York and Paris in 2007–2008, is without doubt one of his most significant and ambitious paintings.

Executed in a larger format than normal for Saint-Aubin, who was more used to small-scale works, it falls into the classical pastoral genre, with a young poet seated in the park of a residence visible behind him. Two young women are about to crown him in recognition of his talent. As Kim de Beaumont suggests (in exh. cat. New York–Paris, 2007–2008), the young poet is probably a self-portrait of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin himself, since it was painted at a time when he was becoming increasingly interested in poetry and trying it out himself.

The significance of the canvas, as much for its size as for the ambition of the subject for an artist such as Saint-Aubin, suggests that it was painted for a commission.

As Berthelot and Brunon-Guardia noted in 1931, The Poet’s Reward seems to have been in the Château de Fourquevaux since it was acquired. In Saint-Aubin’s lifetime, the château was owned by Jean-Louis-Gabriel-Basile de Beccarie de Pavie, Marquis de Fourquevaux, an important collector who owned several works by the artist. These included a number of drawings which appeared in the sale of his descendant, the Marquis de Fourquevaux, in 1876, but most notably several paintings, including Réunion du Boulevard (Perpignan, musée Hyacinthe-Rigaud, inv. 840-2-12), and even more significantly a Concert espagnole (Spanish concert), exhibited by the Marquis at the Salon of the Académie de Toulouse in 1783. As Kim de Beaumont points out (op. cit.), there is a strong possibility that the work exhibited in Toulouse under this title of convenience is the present painting. The Fourquevaux provenance is also given weight by the appearance of the residence in the background of The Poet’s Reward, which partly resembles the Château de Fourquevaux.

The originality and independence that Saint-Aubin showed in his painting are remarkable here. He has used a distinctive style which makes it difficult to recognize the influence of any contemporary artists, as Jacques Mathey notes in a 1950 article: ‘All this is carried out with a perfectly independent vision, with scarcely a trace of the manner of Jeaurat or Boucher who were his masters’. He goes on to say:

‘The whole enchanting work, a combination of strength, precision, and lightness, is undoubtedly the finest Saint-Aubin ever painted. Here, as seldom elsewhere, the painted has become the equal of the draughtsman’ (Mathey, op. cit., p. 108).