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Figures chinoises et tartares: Bonze des Tartares mongous (copy 1)

Entered July 2023

Whereabouts unknown

Medium unknown

Measurements unknown

 

PROVENANCE

Paris(?), private collection, c. 1920-30.

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dacier, Vuaflart and Hérold, Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs (1921-29), 1: 25.

 

REMARKS

According to Dacier, Vuaflart, and Hérold, this picture was a copy after the Jullienne engraving of Bonze des Tartares mongous and in the same direction as the print, as well as the same height. They did not specify the city in which the painting was located. As far as can be judged, it has not been seen on the art market in the intervening years since then.

 

 

 

 

 

Figures chinoises et tartares (copy 2)

Entered July 2023

Whereabouts unknown

Medium unknown

Measurements unknown

 

PROVENANCE

Paris

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dacier, Vuaflart and Hérold, Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs (1921-29), 1: 25.

REMARKS

According to Dacier, Vuaflart, and Hérold, this picture was a grisaille copy after one of the four horizontal compositions engraved by Michel Aubert, that is, Habillements de ceux de Soutchovene, Habillements des habitants de la province de Hou Konaun, Idole de la déese Ki Mao Sáo, or La Déese Thvo Chvu. Unfortunately, these scholars did not specify which of the four compositions it was. They apparently saw the painting, but all they reported was that it seemed to be a copy. As far as can be judged, it has not appeared on the art market in the intervening years since then.

 

 

Figures chinoises et tartares: Viosseu ou musicien chinois (copy 3)

Entered July 2023

Whereabouts unknown

Oil on canvas

23.4 x 18.2 cm

           
ALTERNATIVE TITLES

Chinese Musician

 

PROVENANCE

Paris, sale, March 28-29, 1829, lot 71: “WATTEAU (ANTOINE ). . . Composition de deux figures de Chinois, dont l’un joue de la vielle.”

France, private collection, c. 1995.

New York, Sotheby’s, January 11, 1996, lot 151: “Jean Antoine Watteau . . . A CHINESE MUSICIAN PLAYING A HURDY-GURDY WITH A COMPANION IN A LANDSCAPE. oil on canvas. 9 11/16 by 7 1/4 in. 23 by 18.4 cm. The present painting is the first of the Château de la Muette decorations to appear in modern times. It was at the Château de la Muette in the forest of Saint Germain that Watteau executed at least thirty paintings for a small room called the cabinet du roy. . .
    Adhémar and Huyghe . . . suggest that several of the small paintings for the Château de la Muette may have decorated a harpsichord in the room . . . it is easy to imagine Watteau’s painting decorating such a piece of furniture . . .
    Provenance: Painted for the cabinet du Roi, Château de la Muette Possibly Bezançon de Wagner . . . $80,000-120,000.” Bought by Henry H. Weldon.

New York, collection of Henry H. Weldon (1905-2003). His sale, New York, February 1, 2018, lot 70: “JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU . . . ‘Viosseu’ or Chinese musician; Chinese woman of Kouei Tchéou: A pair of paintings a pair, both oil on canvas each 9¼ by 7¼ in.: 23.4 by 18. 2 cm. (2) $400,000-600,000 / €336,000-505,000 £301,000-450,000 for the pair. PROVENANCE . . . EXHIBITED . . . LITERATURE . . . These small, delightful paintings are the only known surviving works that formed part of a decorative scheme executed by Watteau for a small room in the Château de la Muette, a 16^th century hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Until the reappearance of these two paintings, Chinese Musician in 1996 and Chinese Woman in 2009 . . . the designs for the château were known only from a series thirty prints advertised for sale in the Mercure de France in 1731 and subsequently published in the Recueil Julienne in 1734 . . . In her reconstruction of the cabinet at La Muette, Katie Scott . . . proposes that the small rectangular pictures were arranged in two tiers and that Chinese Musician and Chinese Woman were positioned on the top level, possibly inset above pier-mirrors or overmantles. The trompe l’oeil ‘gilt’ frames on both pictures may have formed part of the decoration or could have been added later after the room had been dismantled in order to transform them into cabinet pictures. In addition to the figural paintings by Watteau, it is thought that there were arabesques, most likely painted by Claude III Audran with whom Watteau was working in 1708-12.“ Bought in.

 

EXHIBITIONS

New Orleans, Museum, In the Eye of the Beholder (1997), cat. 68 (as Watteau, Chinese Musician, Henry H. Weldon collection)

Brussels, Palais des beaux-arts, Leçon de musique (2013), cat. 125 (as Watteau, Viosseu ou musicien chinois, private collection).

Paris, Jacquemart Andreé, De Watteau à Fragonard (2014), cat. 10 (as Watteau, Viosseu ou musicien chinois, private collection).

Besançon, Musée, La Chine rêvée (2019), cat. 9 (as by Watteau, Viosseu ou musicien chinois, New York, private collection).

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eidelberg and Gopin, “Watteau’s Chinoiseries at La Muette” (1997), 24.

Ottawa, In the Age of Watteau (2003), 115.

Scott, “Playing Games” (2003), 196-97.

Glorieux, Watteau (2011), 56-58.

 

REMARKS

It is quite possible that this picture, which we maintain is a copy after one of the chinoiserie subjects at La Muette, is to be identified with a painting of the same subject that was sold in Paris in 1829. It was by itself in that sale, and still when it reappeared shortly before 2000. However, the situation changed in the first decade of the twenty-first century when a second composition related to the La Muette cycle came to light. The two pictures’ distinctive manner of execution and their common format of being encircled within a painted illusion of a wooden frame make it apparent that they were executed by the same copyist.

 

Although there were thirty pictures in Watteau’s chinoiserie series, it is unlikely that more copies in this set will be uncovered in the future. More likely, from the start there was just this pair of copies, and they reflect how the two Jullienne engravings on which they were based were paired and printed together on one sheet.

After an appearance at auction in 1829, this painting disappeared from sight until just before the end of the twentieth century. In modern times its authenticity has been enthusiastically accepted by Wint, Grasselli, Scott, Holmes, Roland Michel, Wintermute, Rimbaud, in short, by almost every critic who has weighed in on the question. Roland Michel, though accepting Watteau’s authorship, questioned whether the painting was from La Muette or, instead, was a later repetition by him—an unlikely theory. Likewise, Glorieux theorized that the two pictures were only modelli by Watteau but this idea is equally unconvincing, especially because Watteau bever painted oil sketches for other compositions. Eidelberg and Gopin have consistently voiced their opposition to the idea that it is autograph. They believes that the Weldon picture was executed by an anonymous copyist working from the Julienne engraving.

 

While most modern critics have been attracted to the freedom of the painting’s brushwork, the handling of the paint is too free. It is not merely painterly but is excessively turbulent, without parallel in Watteau’s oeuvre. This energetic brushwork often obscures and is unrelated to what was represented in Watteau’s original design and in Aubert’s engraving. For example, in Aubert’s engraving the musician extends his slippered left foot out from under his gown, but in the Weldon picture that foot has been misinterpreted as yet another fold of drapery. Likewise, whereas Watteau painted a few plants and two small rocks in the foreground of his painting, all of which was dutifully recorded by Aubert, the Weldon copyist was cavalier about this portion of the painting. Both Watteau and Aubert rendered the plants’ stems and leaves with botanical precision and carefully defined the facets of the rocks, but the anonymous copyist replaced all this with impetuous strokes of green paint: the plants have no stems or leaves, and the rocks disappear into a green maelstrom. Equally telling is the depiction of the hurdy gurdy. Watteau was an accurate painter of musical instruments and carefully depicted how they are played. Certainly that is the case in Watteau’s Viosseu, as recorded in Aubert’s engraving. On the other hand, in the Weldon version the shape of the hurdy gurdy is uncertain, and the chords are not shown. Instead, all that we have is a blur of hasty brushwork. Not least, as Aubert’s engraving shows, Watteau defined the positioning of the musician’s fingers with sensitivity, whereas the Weldon copyist clumsily reduced them to abstract strokes.

A word must be said about the illusion of the wooden frame which surrounds the figures and landscape. Laboratory analysis has found that these outer portions are of a piece with the central image. This would negate some critics’ idea that they were later additions. Moreover, since the canvas has been cut at the sides, the original canvases must have included more of these pseudo-wooden frames. This mundane framing cannot be found in Audran’s work nor in Watteau’s, and serves as a warning to those who believe in the authenticity of the Weldon picture. It is old-fashioned and inartistic. Although Scott was aware of these painted frames, she did not include them in her reconstruction of her  putative Cabinet du Roi. Likewise, none of the other scholars who have accepted the pictures have considered the implications of these painted corners. When multiplied thirty times over, the result would be overwhelmingly heavy-handed and retrogressive. It certainly is not the light, lyrical, rococo vocabulary that Audran and Watteau were forging. This painted framing helps rule out any possibility that this pictures could be by Watteau, or even that it reflects Watteau’s and Audran’s decoration at La Muette.

 

 

Figures chinoises et tartares: Femme chinoise de Koueil Tchéou (copy 4)

Entered July 2023

Whereabouts unknown

Oil on canvas

23.4 x 18.2 cm

           
ALTERNATIVE TITLES

Chinese woman of Kouei Tchéou

PROVENANCE

Paris, April 28-29, 1829, lot 72: “Par le même [WATEAU (ANTOINE)] . . . Jeune fille assise dans un Jardin; près d’elle est un jeune garçon. Pendant du precedent [deux figures de Chinois, dont l’un joue de la vielle].

Switzerland, art market, c. 2009.

Sold via Sotheby’s, private treaty, November 2009, to Henry H. Weldon.

New York, collection of Henry H. Weldon (1905-2003). His sale, New York, February 1, 2018, lot 70: “JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU . . . ‘Viosseu’ or Chinese musician; Chinese woman of Kouei Tchéou: A pair of paintings a pair, both oil on canvas each 9¼ by 7¼ in.: 23.4 by 18. 2 cm. (2) $400,000-600,000 / €336,000-505,000 £301,000-450,000 for the pair. PROVENANCE . . . EXHIBITED . . . LITERATURE . . . These small, delightful paintings are the only known surviving works that formed part of a decorative scheme executed by Watteau for a small room in the Château de la Muette, a 16^th century hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Until the reappearance of these two paintings, Chinese Musician in 1996 and Chinese Woman in 2009 . . . the designs for the château were known only from a series thirty prints advertised for sale in the Mercure de France in 1731 and subsequently published in the Recueil Julienne in 1734 . . . In her reconstruction of the cabinet at La Muette, Katie Scott . . . proposes that the small rectangular pictures were arranged in two tiers and that Chinese Musician and Chinese Woman were positioned on the top level, possibly inset above pier-mirrors or overmantles. The trompe l’oeil ‘gilt’ frames on both pictures may have formed part of the decoration or could have been added later after the room had been dismantled in order to transform them into cabinet pictures. In addition to the figural paintings by Watteau, it is thought that there were arabesques, most likely painted by Claude III Audran with whom Watteau was working in 1708-12." Bought in.

 

EXHIBITIONS

Brussels, Palais des beaux-arts, Leçon de musique (2013), cat. 126 (as Watteau, Femme chinoise de Kouei Tchéou, private collection).

Paris, Jacquemart Andreé, De Watteau à Fragonard (2014), cat. 11 (as Watteau, Femme chinoise de Kouei Tchéou, private collection).

Besançon, Musée, La Chine rêvée (2019), cat. 10 (as by Watteau, Kouei Tchéou ou femme chinoise, New York, private collection).

 

REMARKS

Until now it had not been noted that this picture was sold in 1829 with Viousseu ou musicien chinois (our copy 3). They were sold as separate but sequential lots. At some point in the nineteenth century they were separated, and only the pendant Viousseu re-emerged in the last years of the century. Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, when this version of Femme chinoise de Kouei Tchéou first reappeared, it received immediate acceptance as being from Watteau’s hand, especially because it corresponded in execution and format to the picture of Viosseu, musicien chinois that was in the Weldon collection (our copy 3). The latter work had almost unanimous acceptance as a work from Watteau’s hand. The two paintings’ distinctive manner of execution and their common format of being encircled within a painted illusion of a wooden frame makes it apparent that they were painted by the same copyist. While they clearly are pendants, both are copies made after the prints in the Jullienne Oeuvre gravé.

As there originally were thirty pictures in Watteau’s La Muette series, there is a possibility that more copies might be uncovered in the future. More likely, though, there were just these two paintings and they reflect how in the eighteenth century Aubert’s engravings after the two compositions were printed together on one sheet.

That Watteau did not execute this painting is evident in its manner of execution. It is far too painterly. The brushwork is excessively turbulent, without parallel in Watteau’s oeuvre. It often obscures and is unrelated to what was represented in Watteau’s original design and faithfully recorded in Aubert’s engraving. As can be seen in Aubert’s engraving, the woman’s coiffure was held in place by a narrow headband, but in the Weldon picture the band is barely visible and the hair is not controlled. In Watteau’s design, there was a trailing vine with almost circular leaves behind the woman, but the copyist misinterpreted this as a plant with pinkish flowers. Similarly, the lower portion of the boy’s gown makes no sense. The most glaring error is the way that the painted frame abruptly cuts into Watteau’s carefully conceived composition. Not only does it infelicitously chop off the boy’s right foot and shoe, but it leaves the woman and child intently looking down at nothing, whereas Watteau had provided a little pool with small rocks and grasses to justify their gaze. Considered together, these small faux pas point to the consistent weakness of the copyist.

 

 

 

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