Etienne Jeaurat

Collection François-André Philidor (1726-1795);

Collection Canuet, bought at auction in 1873;

By descent in the same family until 2015;

Anonymous sale, Beaussant & Lefèvre, Paris, 9 December 2015, lot 37;

Where acquired by the Galerie Claude Vittet, Paris;

From whom, acquired by the present owner.

R. E. André, 'Un petit maître: Étienne Jeaurat', in Journal de l'Antiquaire, 17 February 1929.

Salon de Paris, 1763, no. 11;

Ferney-Voltaire, Château de Voltaire, Ecrire l'histoire. Voltaire et les rois, September 2021-January 2022.

Etienne Jeaurat (1699–1789), the French painter and draughtsman, was trained by Nicolas Vleughels, who took him to Rome in 1724 when he was appointed director of the Académie de France there. Upon his return, Jeaurat was approved by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1731 and admitted in 1733. He became in turn professor, rector and chancellor, then Painter to the King and finally, in 1767, Keeper of the King’s Paintings.

He exhibited regularly at the Salon and became famous for his genre painting, with humorous and even satirical illustrations of his contemporaries’ lives, both ordinary people and the bourgeoisie. Jeaurat made his mark on eighteenth century art with his choice of subjects and his realistic view of society, in contrast to the Rococo style that was then dominant. While the artists of the court favoured mythological and religious themes or portraits, Jeaurat, despite being trained as a history painter, concentrated on the depiction of ordinary life under Louis XV: street scenes, the countryside, fêtes, domestic or shop interiors. His works were widely circulated as engravings.

At the 1763 Salon, Jeaurat exhibited Javotte’s Lemons, a scene inspired by one of Jean-Joseph Vadée’s stories, published in 1758, showing that the popular – even vulgar – literature typical of Vadée’s writing could inspire artists of the eighteenth century. In fact, the author was even portrayed by Jeaurat in one of his compositions: The Poet Piron Dining with his Friends Vadé and Collé (oil on canvas, 54.5 x 66.5 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. RF 2440).

The scene takes place inside an inn, where four male figures are gathered around a laid table. A fifth has risen from the table and is seen from the back on the far right. To the left of the composition, a man is picking up oyster shells scattered across the floor. Two female figures are approaching the table. One has come from the kitchen, holding a bottle in one hand and a tray with a glass in the other. The second woman is presenting the seated men with a wicker tray containing lemons, while one of the diners grasps her left wrist. The painting’s title is inscribed on a pilaster in the background, above some caricatural graffiti and beneath a figurative medallion.

Not much admired by Diderot, as evidenced in his Salon de 1763, the painting was however noted by Mathon de la Cour, who remarked in his Lettres à Madame ***, sur les peintures, les sculptures et les gravures exposées dans le salon du Louvre en 1763: ‘Le public l’a vu avec quelque plaisir.’ (‘the public viewed it [the painting] with some pleasure’). The work appealed to the Marquise de Pompadour, who preferred this scene to the painting The Graces Enchained by Van Loo (see S. Puychevrier, Etienne Jeaurat: essai historique et biographique sur cet artiste, Paris, 1862, p. 15).

There is a known preparatory study for this painting, in black chalk and wash highlighted with white gouache, now in the Metropolitan Museum, with the title Three Men at a Table (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 1999.150; ill. 1).

Ill. 1 Etienne Jeaurat, Three Men at a Table © The Metropolitan Museum, Harry G. Sperling and Mary Oenslager Funds, 1999