Oil on canvas
78 x 90 in. (199 x 227 cm)
82 x 93 in. (209 x 237 cm) framed
|
This previously unrecorded picture is a significant new addition to the œuvre of Jean Pillement, one of the most important French artists of the 18th century and indisputably one of the most influential in the development of the rococo style in European fine and decorative arts.
The painting is a smaller version of a large canvas, one of a pair (now in the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris), commissioned by King Stanislas II Augustus Poniatowski of Poland (1732-1798), during Pillement’s sojourn in Warsaw from 1765-1767 during which time the artist received the title of peintre du roi. The paintings were destined for Ujazdów Castle, one of the King’s secondary residences on the outskirts of the capital, in which he intended to create a ‘Cabinet Pillement’ entirely decorated by his court painter. In the end, however, the paintings were never used, as Stanislas opted not to inhabit Ujazdów and in 1784 deeded it to the army, who converted the castle into a military hospital. The paintings were then presented by the King to his niece, the Countess Mniszech, for use in her dining room at Wisniowiec Castle, near Wolyn in present day Ukraine. Her heirs settled in Paris in the 19th century and donated the pictures to the City in 1901.
Both the present painting and the Paris canvas depict the identical scene of a standing Chinese female figure holding a torch, flanked by one seated and one
kneeling Chinese man in front of a square pergola floating in a landscape of flowers and foliage. The Paris painting, however, is significantly larger (measuring 393 x 301 cm) and incorporates a more extensive landscape under a pergola construction from which an oval medallion depicting a further landscape is suspended by floral garlands. Interestingly, a close examination of the smaller canvas removed from the stretcher reveals that its edges retain their original pinholes discreet from the paint surface, indicating the picture has not been cut down and was never identical in size to the larger version. The image however is identical in scale, which indicates that the same cartoon was used for both pictures.
In light of the almost exact similarity between the two scenes, and the fact that Pillement tended to sign and date his work after 1767, it seems logical to assume that the present canvas was also produced during Pillement’s stay in Poland, in all likelihood for Stanislas Augustus, or else someone in his circle who would have been able to see the large pair of chinoiserie pictures firsthand. As very few archival records survive, it is impossible to establish with certainty whether this or the Paris picture is the first version. It is entirely plausible that the smaller canvas could have been intended as a highly-finished preparatory study for the larger oil. Alternatively, it is not inconceivable that Stanislas Augustus, having deemed the larger picture no longer necessary for his requirements, may have been sufficiently enchanted nonetheless by the quality of its decoration and execution to have commissioned another version of the composition for a different project, accordingly adapted to a different-sized space. Unless further documentary evidence comes to light, however, the specific details of Pillement’s creative output during his time in Poland can only remain speculative.
Biographical Note
Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808) was an extremely prolific painter and draughtsman whose career spanned nearly six decades and at least six different countries. He was born the oldest of five children in Lyon, where he received his initial training with the history painter Daniel Sarrabat (1666-1748), and later worked at the Gobelins tapestry factory in Paris, developing a fluid Rococo style influenced by the genre paintings of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. He also quickly developed a style of landscape painting influenced by Boucher and Vernet. These two tendencies - decorative rococo/chinoiserie scenes and landscapes – became the predominant styles of his artistic output during his entire career.
In 1745 he left Paris to work in Madrid, and then spent the next twenty-three years living and working outside of France, in Portugal, England, Vienna, and Warsaw, where he was named painter to the King of Poland, Stanislas II Augustus Poniatowski. The later years of his life appear to have been divided between France, England and Portugal, where his commissions included the South Sea room in the Viscount de Asseca’s palace at Sintra, greatly admired by William Beckford; eleven paintings for the actor David Garrick’s villa at Hampton Court (which the artist referred to as bagatelles ) and three paintings for the Petit Trianon ordered by Marie-Antoinette, who appointed Pillement peintre de la Reine.
Pillement’s highly inventive and inexhaustible repertoire of designs exerted a huge influence on artists working in the rococo style, and they were disseminated widely, not least in England, through published volumes of engravings after his work, notably Recueil de différentes fleurs de fantaisie dans le goût chinois (London 1760) and One Hundred and Thirty Figures and Ornaments and Some Flowers in the Chinese Style (London 1767).
|
|
|