GALERIE DUCHESSE BERRY

GALERIE BERRY 

Grenier Tableau & Lithographie

 Galerie Lithographiée de la Duchesse de Berry 1822 Paris

https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/old-master-paintings-n08952/lot.86.html

Description

• Gerard van Spaendonck

• 
  

• Still life of roses, hyacinth, wallflower and other flowers in a lapis lazuli vase;
  Still life of narcissus, hyacinth and other flowers in a brown porphyry vase

• A pair, both signed lower centre: G. Van Spaendonck
  Brushed on reverse with cipher of the Duchesse de Berry and inv. nos.: 5 & 8

• both oil on canvas, unlined

• Each: 18 by 15 ¼ in.; 45.7 x 38.4 cm.

Provenance

Possibly acquired by Louis-Auguste, Duc de Berry, who became King Louis XVI of France in 1774, on their creation in circa 1783;

In the Collection of (probably by descent from the above) Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luisa di Borbone, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870);

By descent through offspring of her morganatic marriage in 1831 to Ettore Carlo di Lucchesi Palli, Principe di Campofranco and Duca della Grazia (1806-1864);

Thence by descent to the present owners.

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1783, no. 89, described as "Deux Tableaux ovales, l'un un Vase de lapis lasulis, & l'autre un Vase de porphire; tous deux remplis de différentes fleurs. 17 pouces de haut, par 14 de large."

Literature

Livret du Salon de l’Académie Royale de Peinture, Paris, 1783, p. 30, no. 89;

Le Véridique au Salon, Paris, 1783, p. 17;

Le Chevalier Bonnemaison, Galerie de Son Altesse Royale Madame la Duchesse De Berry – Ecole Francaise – Peintures Modernes. Ouvrage dedie a son Altesse Royale et lithographie par d’habiles artistes sous la direction de M. Le Chevalier Bonnemaison, printed by J. Didot the Elder, Paris 1822, 8th and 10th books, 3 pp. text and lithographie, A and B, reproduced figures 5 and 6;

J.F.H. Lommen, Levensbeschrÿving van Gerardus van Spaendonck, Tilburg, 1863, pp. 16-17;

M. van Boven and S. Segal, Gérard and Cornelis van Spaendonck, Maarssen, 1980, p. 187, cited under nos. 136-1 and 136-2; 1988, pp. 199-200, nos. 168-169;

B. Scott, "The Duchess of Berry as a Patron of the Arts," in Apollo, CXXIV, no. 296, October 1986, p. 353, note 36. 

Engraved:

Lithographs executed by Auguste Piquet de Brienne (1789-1880), under the supervision of the keeper of the Duchesse de Berry's collection, the Chevalier Féréol de Bonnemaison (1770 - 1827), illustrated in M. van Boven and S. Segal, cited above, p. 187, nos. 136-1 and 136-2.

Catalogue Note

Gérard van Spaendonck was the foremost European painter of floral and fruit still life at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19thcenturies. In his lifetime he achieved great renown as the heir of the tradition of flower painting of which Jan van Huysum (1682 - 1749) had been the principal exponent in the preceding generation, and he was the master of the botanical draftsman and painter, Pierre Joseph Redouté.

 Although a native of Tilburg, in Northern Brabant, Gérard van Spaendonck spent almost his entire professional career in France. In 1769 he left his homeland and settled in Paris, where in 1774 he was appointed miniature painter to the young Louis XVI. Having been elected to associate membership in the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, he made his Salon début in 1777. Three years later he became professor at the Jardin des Plantes. In 1781 he was made a full member of the Académie and began to produce drawings in watercolour on vellum for an extraordinary series of botanical studies known as the "Vélins du Roi." At the Salon of 1783, where the present paintings were exhibited, he showed two such watercolours.

Gérard van Spaendonck's oil paintings stand out because of the exquisite precision of the artist's draftsmanship, his keen sense of colour, the harmonious balance of his compositions and the pristine facture that allows him to render minute details, such as droplets of water on petals or leaves. According to Peter Mitchell:

 “the basis of Gérard van Spaendonck's success, in common with other great flower painters, was a complete, technical mastery of flower painting, in all mediums, in every scale from a circular miniature... to a full-size Salon canvas in oil. The textures of alabaster and marble are as perfectly rendered as the fruit, flowers and foliage. It is the completeness of his attention to every minute detail, allied to elegance and refinement in the composition, that makes him the heir of Jan van Huysum. Like van Huysum, Gérard van Spaendonck perfects the Dutch traditional mastery of the study, understanding and depiction of flowers with French sophistication and good taste. [Anthony] Blunt considered his watercolour botanical studies the equal of Redouté's.”1

The individual blossoms of the present exquisite floral arrangements can be identified as follows:

· In the lapis lazuli vase is an assortment of pink cabbage roses (in full bloom and in buds), a large white wild rose, yellow New England asters, white hyacinths, orange wallflowers, a purplish red peony, lilacs, blue auricula and striated red and white carnations, one with a broken stem.

· In the porphyry vase is a grouping of four white narcissus, pale blue primroses, white asters, purple ranunculi (butter-cups), blue hyacinths, blue campanula or bell-flowers, deep purple wall-flowers, two pink anemones, long stems of grass and a red trailing East Indian nasturtium.

The early provenance of the paintings is not absolutely certain, though it is likely that they were first acquired by Louis-Auguste, Duc de Berry, who became King Louis XVI of France in 1774. As already mentioned, Spaendonck was appointed miniaturist to the King that same year and so must have been particularly favoured. Louis may well have obtained the paintings for his wife Marie-Antoinette of Austria.

The first known owner of these paintings was the Duchesse de Berry, the daughter of Francesco I, King of Naples and the Two Sicilies. In 1816 she was married to her cousin Charles Ferdinand de Bourbon, Duc de Berry, the son of the future King Charles X of France, who had inherited them. Left a widow when her husband was assassinated in February 1820, the Duchesse gave birth the following 9th September to her only son, Henri de Bourbon, Comte de Chambord, the last legitimate claimant to the throne of France (sometimes known as Henri V). She and her children lived at the Tuileries Palace in Paris, at the Château de Bagatelle and at the Château de Rosny, near Mantes-la-Jolie, where she maintained her considerable art collections, which included a sizeable collection of botanical studies by Gérard van Spaendonck and his pupil Redouté and the present oval still lifes. The Duchesse was herself particularly keen on floral painting and was instructed in the subject by Pancrace Bessa, an apprentice of Spaendonck, who specialised in drawings of flora and botanical subjects.

The Duchesse de Berry went into exile after the overthrow of her father-in-law in 1830. Returning to France secretly in 1832, she attempted to win the throne for her son, activities for which she was imprisoned. However, when it became obvious that she was pregnant, she was forced to reveal her secret marriage to an Italian aristocrat, Ettore Carlo di Lucchesi Palli (1806-1864), by whom she had issue. Her second marriage alienated her royalist supporters, and the government of Louis-Philippe de Bourbon Orléans (ruled 1830-1848) finally released her. She lived for a time in Vienna and then settled in the Castle of Brünsee, near Graz, in the Austrian state of Styria, where she died on April 17, 1870.

The present pair was engraved in 1822 in a large catalogue of “Modern French Painting” and the engravings were stamped with the blind stamp of the coat of arms of the Ducs de Berry in the lower centre. Auguste Piquet de Brienne (1789 – Paris – after 1847), a pupil of Spaendonck and Jan Frans van Dael, made drawings after both paintings for the production of these engravings (see Segal 1980/1988, p. 187, no. 136 for full descriptions). They were imprinted on thin paper, the ovals measuring 226 x 192 mm. One bears the inscriptions G.Vanspaendonck pinx lower left, Bonnemaison direx lower centre, and ABrienne del lower right. The other is inscribed Vanspaendonck lower left, with the same inscriptions lower right and lower centre.

Dr Segal has also noted that: “two drawings in watercolour with bodycolour over black chalk may be connected with the pair and might be preparatory studies”. They were with Colnaghi, London in 1987 (for more detail see Segal 1988, p. 223, nos. 93a) and 93b). The first one is identical to one of the present pair of paintings, and the other one shows several differences to the other one, though as Segal writes:

“changes could have been made in the painting to obtain a more successful composition”.

The present still lifes were exhibited by van Spaendonck at the Salon of 1783 along with four other entries (handbook nos. 88, 90, 91 and 92):

· Un vase d'albâtre oriental rempli de différentes fleurs, posé sur un socle, où sont représentés des enfants en bas relief

· Etude de pêches posées sur une pierre

· Autre tableau de Pêches dans une assiette

· Deux plantes étrangères peintes sur vélin, faisant suite de la collection des plantes pour le Roi

According to the art critic of the influential newspaper the Mercure de France:

"Mr. Van Spaendonck n'a pas d'émule dans l'art de peindre les fleurs, les plantes, les fruits ni dans la manière de les grouper dans de beaux vases. On ne peut le comparer qu'à van Huysum, ou plutôt qu'à la nature qu'il rend dans toute sa fraîcheur, son éclat, sa vivacité."2 

[Monsieur Van Spaendonck has no rival in the art of painting flowers, plants, fruits, nor in the art of arranging them in beautiful vases. He can only be compared to van Huysum, or better yet, to nature that he renders in all of its freshness, its brilliance, its vivacity.]

We are grateful to Sam Segal for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. The text  text here based mainly based on an earlier report by Dr. Segal. 

1.  See P. Mitchell, in The Dictionary of Art, 1996, vol. XXIX, p. 255.

2.  Observations ou réflexions sur l'exposition des peintures, sculptures, dessins et gravures de MM. de l'Académie royale en 1783 Mercure de France, No. 38, 1783; handwritten transcription in the Collection Deloynes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, XIII, pièce no. 309, msp. 915.