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X. Vénus et l’Amour

Entered December 2014

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Whereabouts unknown

Oil on canvas

47 x 37 cm

 

ALTERNATIVE TITLES

Jeune femme et enfant

 

PROVENANCE

Paris, collection of Camille Marcille (1816-1875, painter and curator).  His sale, January 12-13, 1856 sale, lot 148: “WATTEAU (ANTOINE) . . . Jeune femme et enfant. (Pastiche de P. Véronèse).” According to an annotated copy of the catalog in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, it sold for 295 livres to Fleury.

Paris, collection of Baron de Beurnonville. His sale May 9-16, 1881, lot 191: ”WATTEAU (ANTOINE)…Vénus et l’Amour. L’Amour, nu, se hausse pour atteindre des fleurs que sa mere lui présente dans un pli de sa jupe. Esquisse exécutée sous l’influence des maîtres Vénitiens. Collection Camille Marcille. Toile. Haut. 47 cent.; larg., 37 cm.” According to an annotated copy of the catalog in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, it sold for 710 livres to de Beurnonville or, rather, did he buy it back?

(?) Isle Adam, château, collection of M. Rousset (c. 1885). Adhémar questioningly proposed that the Isle Adam painting was the one sold four years earlier from the Beurnonville collection. Macchia and Montagni, simplifying her account, accepted that it was.

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adhémar, Watteau (1950), under cat. 177.

Macchia and Montagni, L’Opera completa di Watteau, under cat. 124.

Rosenberg, “Une Note sur L’Amour désarmé” (1993), 1-4.

Garnier-Pelle, Chantilly, Musée Condé (1995), under cat. 110.

 

REMARKS

Adhémar had linked this painting with a copy of L’Amour désarmé that had been in various Parisian private collections in the early nineteenth century. However, unlike Watteau’s composition, the Marcille/Beurnonville version showed significant differences. Cupid reaches up for flowers held out by Venus in a fold of her drapery whereas in Watteau’s painting she holds a bow aloft.