Catalogue entry
François Boucher 1703–1770
NG 1090
Syrinx seeking Refuge from Pan with a Sister River‐Nymph
, 2018
Extracted from:
Humphrey Wine, The Eighteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).
Humphrey Wine and Virginia Napoleone, Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings in the National Gallery:
Appendix to ‘The National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (London: National Gallery Company, 2018).
© The National Gallery, London
Oil on canvas, 32.6 × 41.8 cm
Signed and dated lower left: f. Boucher / 1759
Provenance
In the collection of Armand‐Pierre‐François de Chastre de Cangey, sieur de Billy (died 1784) by 1771;1 his sale, A.J. Paillet, Paris, 15 November 1784, lot 48, 651 livres to Quesnay (or Quenet);2 sale of Auguste‐Gabriel Godefroy (1728–1813), Le Brun, Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 15–19 November 1785, lot 45 on 15 November, 660 livres, 1 sol to Hamon;3 possibly the painter Pau de Saint‐Martin’s posthumous sale, Charles Paillet, Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 2 October 1820, lot 77;4 anon. sale (Count Sommariva?), P.E. Martin, expert, Paris, rue du Mont‐Blanc, no. 3, 11 April 1822 and following, lot 2, with an avant la lettre state of the engraving, 148 francs;5 possibly Sir William Jackson sale, Paris, 25–26 February 1848, lot 34 (bought in), and Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 12–13 March 1849, lot 4,6 but said by Ellen Julia Hollond (née Teed; 1822–1884) of 1 Upper Berkeley Street, London, and Stanmore Hall, Great Stanmore, Middlesex, to have been in her possession for forty years when presented by her in 1880.7
Exhibitions
Tokyo 1982 (56); Paris, Philadelphia and Fort Worth 1991–2 (50);8 Brussels and London 2014–15 (75).
Related Works
A. Drawings by Boucher related to NG 1090
- (3) A study (Indiana University Art Museum, Evan F. Lilly Memorial Fund) for the figure
of Syrinx, red, black and white chalks on prepared beige paper (fig. 3), corresponding to Ananoff 1976, no. 519/7, fig. 1441, in Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington (first recorded
as having been in the collection of comte [Jacques?] de la Beraudière). As Slatkin pointed out, the figure in this drawing corresponds
much more closely to Syrinx in NG 1090 than does the corresponding figure in the preceding
drawing.10
Fig. 1 François Boucher, Study for a Reclining Female Nude, about 1759. Red chalk heightened with white, 28.6 × 44.5 cm. Private collection. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS © Sotheby’s / akg‐images
Fig. 2 François Boucher, Study for the Nymph Syrinx and her Female Companion, about 1759. Black chalk heightened with white on buff paper, 25.3 × 39.7 cm. Whereabouts unknown. © The National Gallery, London
Fig. 3 François Boucher, Study for the Nymph Syrinx, about 1759. Red, black and white chalks on beige paper, 20.2 × 29.2 cm. Bloomington, Indiana University Art Museum, Evan F. Lilly Memorial Fund. BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA Indiana University Art Museum © Kevin Montague
B. Works after NG 1090
Paintings and Pastels
- (1) A gouache by Charlier that had been in Joseph Bardac’s sale, 9 December 1927, lot 5, noted in Ananoff 1976, no. 519/13, as in an American private collection was in the collection of Raine, Countess Spencer (sold Christie’s, London, 13 July 2017, lot 40).
- (2) A version, probably a copy, in a Caen private collection signalled to Martin Davies by Tastemain, a Caen dealer, in September 1934.12
- (3) An enlarged copy (68 × 84 cm), in reverse and so probably after Martenasie’s print, advertised by Galerie Voltaire in Apollo, December 1954.
- (4) A pastel on vellum copy, 35.5 × 44.5 cm, offered at the Hôtel des Ventes, Autun, 31 March 1991.
- (5) A copy in reverse by Nicolas‐René Jollain, signed lower left: ‘JOLLAIN’, oil on canvas, 64.5 × 112 cm, offered at Ader Tajan, Paris, 1 July 1994, lot 92.
- (6) A copy on panel, 30 × 43.5 cm, in reverse, offered at Haus Köln, 5–7 July 2007, lot 1520, as ‘nach Fragonard’.
- (7) A copy in reverse of Syrinx and her companion, with Cupid but omitting Pan, 68.5 × 84 cm, offered at Christie’s, South Kensington, 21–22 September, 2010, lot 146, and again 6 March 2012, lot 117 (£4,000).
Drawing
A drawing of the heads of a woman and a satyr ascribed to Boucher, red, black and white chalks on pale brown paper, laid down (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. 2889), apparently a compilation copied from offsets of studies for the heads of Syrinx and the satyr.13 It bears the blind‐stamp of the mounter, J.‐B. Glomy.
Engravings
- (1) By Pierre‐François (or Pieter Franciscus or Pitre) Martenasie (Antwerp 1729–1789) in reverse, etching and engraving, finished state, not titled but with Martenasie’s dedication to, and the coat of arms of, ‘N.J. de Busscher le fils de Bruxelles’, and noted as ‘Tiré du Cabinet de Monsieur de Billy’ (Ananoff 1976, no. 519/3, fig. 1439). It was published by Laurent Cars.14
- (2) By Géraud Vidal (Toulouse 1742–Paris 1804?), not titled; in the same direction as NG 1090, etching and engraving (Ananoff 1976, no. 519/1, fig. 1436).15
- (3) Ananoff 1976 (under no. 519/2) notes an engraving by Jules de Goncourt entitled Nymphe couchée vue de dos, but this is related to Related Works A (4) above, not to NG 1090.
Miniature
A variant copy by Jacques Charlier, gouache on ivory, 12.3 × 18 cm (London, Wallace Collection, inv. M59).16
Ceramics and Furniture
- (1) A porcelain ormolu‐framed plaque, 31 × 38.5 cm overall, with a copy of NG 1090 in the same direction as the painting and catalogued as nineteenth‐century English, but possibly French, sold at Christie’s, London, 15 July 2010, lot 710 (£1,875).17
- (2) The painted exterior of the lid of a Ruckers harpsichord (London, private collection) bears the signature ‘F. Boucher’ and incorporates into a scene of Orpheus and the Animals a nymph based on the figure of Syrinx in NG 1090.18
C. Works of the same subject, by or attributed to Boucher but not necessarily otherwise related to NG 109019
- (1) Boucher, Pan and Syrinx, sale of a ‘Man of Fashion Brought from his late Residence in Soho‐Square’, Christie & Ansell, London, 4–5 February, 1779, lot 70, sold Brice (£3 18s.).
- (2) Boucher, Pan and Syrinx, sale of Paul d’Aigremont and Philippe‐Joseph Tassaert, Christie’s, London, 23–24 April 1802, lot 54, sold Gearing (£1 11s. 6d.).
- (6) An oil sketch on canvas, 45 × 55 cm (Ananoff 1976, no. 549/8, ‘esquisse originale … exécuté vers 1732’; Ananoff 1980, no. 103), Sotheby’s, London, 10 December 1986, lot 77 (bought in).
- (9) A (chalk?) drawing, M. Chavray, avocat, sale, Joullain fils, Paris, 9 December 1766 and following, lot 378.26[page 62]
Fig. 4 François Boucher, Neptune and Amymone, about 1758. Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash with highlights on paper, 27.2 × 36 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. PARIS Musée du Louvre © RMN‐Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Thierry Le Mage
- (10) A pen and bistre wash drawing, J.B.P. Le Brun sale, Basan, Paris, 23 December 1771 and following, part lot 562.
- (11) A black chalk drawing on white paper in a landscape setting, Blondel d’Azincourt sale, Paillet, Julliot and Dufresne, Paris, 10 February 1783 and following, lot 152.
- (12) Anon. sale, Basan, Paris, 8–15 March 1784, one of four drawings offered 8 March 1784 comprising lot 139.
- (13) An ink and watercolour drawing, heightened with white over pencil, in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and there attributed to Marie‐Jeanne Boucher;27 once in the collection of Count Tessin in Paris; considered by Alastair Laing to be by Boucher himself.28
D. Works by Boucher of a different subject with a figure closely resembling one of the three principal figures in NG 1090
- (1) The group of two oceanids at bottom right of a Beauvais tapestry, Neptune and Amymone (Paris, Mobilier national), one of a suite of tapestries woven from 1750.29
- (2) A drawing for the nymph at the right of the aforementioned group, but made in reverse, in a private collection.30 The drawing may have been reused for a figure at the left of the central medallion of a sketch for a Gobelins tapestry in the Mobilier national, Paris, begun in 1758.31
- (3) The Rising of the Sun, oil on canvas, 318 × 261 cm, 1753 (London, Wallace Collection, inv. P485), in which the pose of the body and the position of the head of the oceanid at the right are similar to those of Syrinx’s companion.
- (6) The oceanid at the bottom of Juno asking Aeolus to unleash the Winds, 1769, in Fort Worth (see Related Works A (4)) is a variant of Syrinx’s companion in NG 1090. A drawing in black and white chalks on buff paper (Ananoff 1976, no. 674/7) incorporating the oceanid is derived from the painting.34
Technical Notes
Painted on a grey ground on a fine‐weave canvas. Tacking holes through original paint around all four edges suggest that at some time before the painting’s acquisition in 1880 the original tacking margins were removed and the painting tacked onto a new, smaller stretcher. The measurements given are maxima. According to the conservation dossier, NG 1090 was transferred from wood to canvas in 1933. However, visual inspection indicates no evidence that the picture was ever mounted on a wood panel, and the old record may be simply incorrect on this point.35 A label removed from the old lining canvas in 1981 (now in the picture dossier) reads: ‘Ex Collectione / Ardi ptri Fsci/ de Chastre / de Billy’.36 Other than the tacking holes, the painting, last cleaned, restored and relined in 1981–2, is in good condition, subject only to a little wear in the top quarter, to the left of the reeds at left, in Pan’s face, and to Syrinx’s proper right calf. The X‐radiograph reveals a slight adjustment to the contour of the left leg of Syrinx’s companion.
Discussion
The Gallery’s acquisition of NG 1090 was not well received by British critics at the time. Frederic George Stephens, a non‐artist member of the Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood, wrote: ‘A new name has been added to the Catalogue of Pictures in the National Gallery: it is that of Boucher, and refers to a small, not important, nor highly meritorious, example of the artist’s peculiar taste and manner.’37 Edward Cook referred his readers to the Gallery’s Hendrick Van Balen the Elder (with a follower of Jan Brueghel the Elder) Pan pursuing Syrinx (NG 659) for ‘a less gross version of the same subject’.38 NG 1090 fared little better in critical appreciation for much of the twentieth century. Julia de Wolf Addison called it ‘rather sensual and unintellectual … Of Boucher’s painting, no one has given a more complete pen‐picture than Austin Dobson: A Versailles Eden of cosmetic youth / Wherein most things went naked save the Truth!’.39 For Sir Charles Holmes, then Director of the National Gallery, NG 1090 served as ‘an example of [Boucher’s] professional accomplishment, his cold mechanical gaiety’.40 In his catalogue entry, Davies, the painting’s curator, was typically laconic, offering scarcely any text, let alone an opinion.41 This defect was remedied by Wilson, a subsequent curator, who although misidentifying Syrinx’s companion as the River Ladon,42 was the first British commentator to sympathise with the physicality of the paint (‘creamy touches of highlight and delicately blended cross‐hatchings’) and of the subject, noting how Boucher [page 63]‘effectively contrasts the bronzed muscular torso of Pan with the softly swelling forms of the girls’.43 However, it was a few years yet before NG 1090 was the subject of a sustained and broadly appreciative scholarly appreciation.44
It is true that on an initial consideration NG 1090 lacks originality. The broad theme of nymph and satyr, and the narrower one of Pan and Syrinx, were frequent in Boucher’s art (as is evident from Related Works C and, in some cases, D, above). Enlaced or caressing female nudes were commonplace, both in his rendering of subjects such as Jupiter and Callisto and Bacchus and Erigone, and in their use by Boucher as repoussoir figures in, for example, Apollo revealing his Divinity to Issé (1750; Tours, Musée des Beaux‐Arts). The subject of Jupiter and Callisto made a frequent appearance in Boucher’s work, not least around the time that he painted NG 1090. One such was painted in the same year as he painted NG 1090,45 another the following year46 and yet another in 1763.47 The implicit theme of male voyeurism was also a constant in Boucher’s art and, combined with that of unfulfilled male desire, seems to have had a particular appeal for him, or at least his patrons, from the late 1750s, as in Sleeping Bacchantes watched by Satyrs (1758; Related Works D (4)), and Sleeping Bacchantes surprised by Satyrs (1760; Related Works D (5)). These themes coalesce in the subject of Pan and Syrinx, which Boucher also painted frequently around the same period (Related Works C (3, 4 and 7)). NG 1090 is, however, unusual in one respect, namely its size. Boucher painted no other mythology that was so small, at least so far as finished works are concerned, during the 1750s, and no other mythological painting of this size until 1764.48
Boucher used poses for the figures in NG 1090 similar to those in previous and subsequent ones. In any event the figure of the reclining female nude with her back towards the viewer was scarcely original, either to his art or to that of predecessors.49 Such a figure was early studied by Boucher (for example in the red, white and black chalk drawing in the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux‐Arts, inv. EBA no. 591, datable to the early 1720s), and its use in the context of the subject of Pan and Syrinx may have been suggested to him by a print of the subject after Goltzius of about 1589 (Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. 2011.139.163). From this he may have adapted the pose of the muscular river god at the left leaning on an urn for the creamily smooth flesh of nymph at the bottom right of NG 1090.50 He had previously used the motif of the reclining nude with her back to the viewer in combination with another female nude posed like Syrinx in NG 1090, but with a more elevated head. The first‐known instance was probably a chalk and wash drawing for the subject of Neptune and Amymone (Paris, Louvre), where the group is shown in reverse to that in the National Gallery’s painting (fig. 4). He seems then radically to have revised the composition in a now‐lost painting or sketch, presumably with a tapestry in mind, retaining the group of the two nymphs, but now placing them at the right and so facing in the same direction as later adopted in NG 1090. An example of the tapestry made in 1764 is in the collection of the Petit Palais, Paris.51 However, for NG 1090 Boucher approached one or more of the figures in this group anew, as evidenced by drawings specifically related to it (Related Works A, Drawings (1, 2 and 3)). Finally for a fresh treatment of the subject of Neptune and Amymone painted in 1764 (Paris, Mobilier national) Boucher transformed the two nymphs in NG 1090 into putti at the bottom right, and Pan into the satyr grasping Amymone.52 That painting was made with a Gobelins tapestry in mind, of which a painted studio copy (?) is in the Louvre.53
A pose similar to that of the flying cupid with flaming torch and arrow may have been suggested by that (in reverse) of the cupid in the 1752 Danaë (Paris, Louvre) by Charles‐Michel‐Ange Challe.54 However, since Challe had been Boucher’s pupil, it is more likely that Boucher originated the pose; Boucher’s putti, and indeed those of many other artists, were so ubiquitous and constantly reinvented that he would scarcely have needed suggestions from others.55 In any event, a significant difference is that whereas the cupid in Challe’s picture gazes at Danaë’s body (being impregnated by Zeus in the form of a shower of rain), that in NG 1090 totally ignores Pan’s attempted seduction of Syrinx. Instead he is completely absorbed by desire in the form of the flaming torch he carries.
If individual elements of NG 1090 are derivative, the picture as a whole has recently been characterised as ‘wilfully aberrant … cavalier with regard to textual and pictorial tradition’.56 To consider first the textual tradition, in Metamorphoses (I: 689–708) Ovid relates one of Mercury’s tales to the multi‐eyed Argus: how among the wood nymphs was the much sought‐after Syrinx. One day Pan, his head ‘wreathed with a crown of sharp pine‐needles’, tried to persuade her to surrender her virginity. Syrinx, ‘spurning his prayers, fled through the pathless wastes until she came to Ladon’s stream flowing peacefully along his sandy banks … when the water checked her further flight, she besought her sisters of the stream to change her form…’, and when Pan ‘thought he had caught Syrinx, instead of her held naught but marsh reeds in his arms’.57 The subject was one of the most commonly depicted in Western art,58 including by French painters such as Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Mignard.59 Both artists incorporated into their treatments of the subject a river god representing the River Ladon. So too did Jean‐François de Troy in his various renderings now in Los Angeles, Cleveland and Ottawa, and Jean‐Honoré Fragonard in a treatment of the subject in which Syrinx has already turned into reeds that Pan grasps, whilst her companion seeks refuge in Ladon’s arms.60 Boucher himself included Ladon in two of the compositions listed above (Related Works C (7 and 8) (fig. 6)). The absence of the river‐god from NG 1090 raises the question of whether it in fact represents the story of Pan and Syrinx, rather than simply a satyr with nymphs, especially since it was not recognised as being the former during the lifetimes of Boucher or of de Billy (who may have commissioned it). However, in the first place the inclusion of a personification of Ladon was not a requisite of Ovid’s story, in which it was only the Naiads whose help Syrinx sought. In the second place, in addition to the [page 64] river‐god being excluded by a number of seventeenth‐century Northern printmakers, it was also absent from some earlier paintings of the subject by French artists, such as Charles de La Fosse (Orleans, Musée des Beaux‐Arts, inv. 542),61 Noël‐Nicolas Coypel in 1723 (private collection),62 and Jean‐Baptiste‐Marie Pierre in a picture probably shown at the 1746 Salon (Horvitz collection).63 Nor was a river‐god included in illustrations of the story in eighteenth‐century French translations of The Metamorphoses, the most likely literary source for Boucher (if he needed one at all for such a commonly represented tale).64 Thus it was not the exclusion of the river‐god of itself that possibly confused earlier cataloguers of NG 1090 as to its subject. After all, the oval now in the Prado (Related Works C (4) (fig. 5)) also dispensed with the river‐god, but was nevertheless entitled ‘Pan et Syrinx’ when sold in Paris in 1770.65 Consequently NG 1090 is consistent with both Ovid’s text and pictorial tradition.
François Boucher, Pan and Syrinx, about 1760–5. Oil on canvas, 95 × 79 cm. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. MADRID Museo del Prado © Museo Nacional del Prado, Dist. RMN‐GP / image du Prado
François Boucher, Pan and Syrinx. Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash and white highlights on paper, 16.2 × 22 cm. Private collection. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS © Gros & Delettrez / Marc Guermeur
If anything might have misled the earliest cataloguers of NG 1090, it would perhaps have been the virginal Syrinx’s absence of fear and revulsion at her attempted abduction by the half‐man, half‐goat Pan, as was typically depicted (including in Boucher’s own recently sold drawing, Related Works C (8) (fig. 6)). Instead she appears flirtatiously amused by her over‐eager suitor. She affects modesty but, perhaps encouraged by Pan’s frustration at having grasped nothing but reeds, provocatively draws attention to her exposed breast. Such details may have led the cataloguer of the 1822 Martin sale mistakenly to identify Syrinx as Mme de Pompadour! Whereas the moral of Mignard’s treatment of the subject in the Louvre was intended to illustrate the vanity of desire,66 Boucher’s might have been seen as a warning not against desire as such, but as against too readily displaying it. In spirit it might have found a literary equivalent in the words that Rémond de Saint‐Mard had Venus speak to Pan in his Dialogues des Dieux (1749–50) to explain why he failed in his attempt on Syrinx: ‘The folly of lovers is to express desire before arousing it, the reason their quest comes to nought … Such is the nature of love: it arises in confusion and anxiety; that’s its cradle. To be loved it’s only necessary to make a heart anxious; that’s the whole secret.’67 It was not desire as such that was objectionable, but its excessively ardent expression, and even then the objection was not moral but practical. The small scale of NG 1090 might of itself be thought to have reinforced the point, in the sense that what was desirable (the female nude) should be displayed with discretion, and the depiction in it of Pan as a ‘harmless voyeur’ might have been a gentle parody of the situation of a viewer of the painting who, like Pan, could look but not touch.68
From this a more intriguing possibility arises. If it is correct, as Laing has suggested, that de Billy (were he indeed the individual for whom NG 1090 was painted) helped procure virgins for Louis XV’s bed,69 he would have found himself in just the same frustrated position as Pan in relation to Syrinx (and here to her companion nymph), that is to say, obliged on the king’s behalf to vet attractive, possibly flirtatious young virgins (virginity being sine qua non of royal desire) but forbidden to touch them. If it also correct, again as Laing has suggested,70 that Boucher and the sieur de Billy had some private connection, NG 1090 can be seen as an intimate (in terms of size, subject matter and treatment) joke between the two men, and consequently as a witty and original treatment by Boucher of a very common subject.
[page 65]General References
National Gallery Annual Report 1880, pp. 2 and 7 (as hung in the Gallery that year, and ‘painted on panel’); Abridged Catalogue 1881, p. 27 (as on panel);71 Cook 1888, p. 370;72 Descriptive and Historical Catalogue 1889, pp. 58–9 (as on panel); Poynter 1899–1900, vol. 1, p. 64, ill. p. 65; Half Holidays [1903], p. 65; A. Michel 1906; separately paginated supplement: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné de F. Boucher, suivi de la liste des gravures executées d’après ses ouvrages … Établi par les soins de M. L. Soullié, avec la collaboration de M. Ch. Masson no. 248, ill. p. 147 (as: ‘Toile très importante’ and citing the de Billy, Godefroy and Saint‐Martin sales under no. 239, and Martenasie’s engraving under no. 274); Nolhac 1907, photogravure facing p. 88, incorporating a catalogue by Georges Pannier, citing only the doubtful de Wailly73 and Jackson sales, pp. 119–20; National Gallery Trafalgar Square Catalogue 1929, p. 37; Davies 1946, pp. 9–10; Davies 1957, pp. 17–18; Ananoff 1976, vol. 2, pp. 190–1, no. 519, fig. 1438; Jean‐Richard 1978, nos 1412 and 1413 (Martenasie’s engraving), and (by implication) no. 1620 (Vidal’s engraving); Ananoff 1980, no. 547 and pl. LII; Wilson 1985, p. 98 and pl. 39.
Notes
1 Martenasie’s engraving, published by Laurent Cars, includes in the inscription the words: ‘Tiré du Cabinet de Monsieur de Billy’. (Back to text.)
2 Described as: ‘Deux Nymphes au bain & couchées sur des draperies, entre des roseaux; un Satire, conduit par deux Amours, vient les surprendre. Ce joli tableau offre la composition la plus gracieuse, & nous a paru du bon tems de M. Boucher. Hauteur 12 pouces, largeur 15. T[oile].’ The approximate metric equivalents of the measurements in the sale catalogue are 32.5 × 40.6 cm. Chastre de Cangey, sieur de Billy (hereafter ‘de Billy’) is described on the catalogue’s title page as ‘Ecuyer, ancien Commissaire des guerres, & ancien premier Valet de Garde‐Robe du Roi’. His portrait was etched in profile by Claude‐Henri Watelet in 1760 (Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon). The sitter in a portrait by Perronneau dated 1775, and exhibited at the Exposition de Cent Pastels, Paris 1908 (no. 70) as of de Billy, is now thought to be François‐Louis Boy de la Tour: Jeffares 2006, online edn updated 14 August 2015, accessed 15 September, 2015; Arnoult 2014, no. 363 Pa. In 1749 de Billy was recorded as among the ‘gentilshommes ordinaires de la Chambre du Roi’. Among those then sharing his duties were Ange‐Jacques Gabriel, premier architecte du roi, and François‐Marie Aroüet de Voltaire: L’Etat de La France 1749, vol. 1, p. 328. In 1780 de Billy got together with five distinguished friends to organise a joint sale of part of their collections. They were the duc de Rohan‐Chabot, ‘membre honoraire associé libre de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture’, the collector Claude‐Henri Watelet, who had etched de Billy’s portrait twenty years earlier, the comte d’Angiviller, directeur des bâtiments du roi, the bailli de Breteuil and the landscape painter Hubert Robert: Yavchitz‐Koehler 1987, p. 377, note 31.
In the preface to de Billy’s 1784 sale Paillet described him as: ‘un Amateur instruit, qui satisfoit plutôt une passion raisonnée pour les belles choses de l’art, qu’une fantaisie pour les Objets de luxe … M. de Billy dût le goût & la préférence qu’il conserva toute sa vie pour les productions de l’École d’Italie, d’abord à la fréquentation des Artistes de notre École qu’il visitoit souvent, dont il suivoit & les études & les progrès, & de l’amitié desquels il s’honoroit. Il le dût ensuite au voyage que ce premier penchant lui fit faire en Italie, dans lequel il visita, il étudia lui‐même presqu’en Artiste, tous les Chefs‐d’oeuvre dont s’honore cette École universelle des beaux Arts; depuis son retour il ne fut plus occupé qu’a rassembler près de lui, pour le plaisir de ses yeux, des échantillons de chacun des grands Peintres, dont il avoit admiré les Ouvrages à Rome…’. De Billy’s friendship with artists would have been facilitated by his having been granted lodgings in the Louvre in February 1761; he appears to have remained there for the rest of his life (Bailey and Hamilton 1991, pp. 425 and 426, note 24).
There were 248 lots in the 1784 sale, of which 66 were in respect of paintings (mainly Italian) and the rest comprised engravings, drawings, sculpture, furniture, jewellery and objets d’art. Eighteen lots were devoted to French School paintings, all but two to eighteenth‐century pictures. Besides NG 1090 the sale included two other paintings and one sketch by Boucher, six paintings or studies by Pierre and seven by Hubert Robert. Of the Italian School paintings seven were acquired for the French royal collection: Engerand 1900, pp. 540, 542, 543, 544, 545. De Billy had during his lifetime owned pictures by French artists not in his 1784 sale, including several by Claude‐Joseph Vernet: Lagrange 1864, p. 472. Some information on the destiny of a few of the paintings in the sale is contained in Edwards 1996, pp. 249–50. For de Billy’s taste in furniture, see Wilson 1986, pp. 121–6. (Back to text.)
3 The sale was deferred from its original date in 1785 of 25 April and following. Described as: ‘Deux Nayades surprises par un Faune; on y voit aussi deux Amours, dont un occupé à le repousser; l’autre tient un flambeau & une fleche; le fond est terminé par des rochers & des paysages. Ce joli tableau est du beau faire de ce maître. Hauteur 12 pouces, larg[eur]. 16 pouces. T[oile].’ As a child Godefroy was the subject of Chardin’s well‐known Le portrait du fils de M. Godefroy, joaillier, appliqué à voir tourner un toton (Paris, Louvre, inv. RF 1705). Pierre Rosenberg’s entry in the catalogue of the 1979 Chardin exhibition contains a summary account of the life of Godefroy, who would become ‘contrôleur‐général de la marine’ (Rosenberg 1979, p. 240). (Back to text.)
4 Described only as ‘F. Boucher. / Deux nymphes couchées dans des roseaux et surprises par un satyre’. The description is insufficient to securely identify the picture as NG 1090. (Back to text.)
5 Described as: ‘Un Satyre surprend des Nymphes au bain. On croit reconnaître dans ce tableau un illustre personnage et Mme. de Pompadour. Échantillon charmant de ce maître, qui fut l’idole des amateurs de son tems: de la plus belle conservation. On y a joint sa gravure avant la lettre. Toile, hauteur 12 pouces, largeur 15 pouces.’ I am grateful to Alastair Laing for having drawn my attention to this sale. He points out that 148 francs was the best price in the sale for a French painting, and a good one for Boucher then at the nadir of his critical fortune (letter of 20 April 1997, picture dossier). He has also advised that numbers 1 and 3 rue du Mont‐Blanc (since 1816 strictly speaking called by its original name of the Chaussée d’Antin) backed onto number 2 boulevard des Capucines and formed the old hôtel de Montmorency, which was acquired by Count Sommariva in 1807 and remained in the possession of his widow until her death in 1858. (Back to text.)
6 Described in the 1849 sale as ‘Nymphe au bain, surprise par un Satyre. Un Fleuve, sous les traits d’une femme, cherche à la défendre; un amour, tenant un flambeau, couronne cette composition.’ The description in the 1848 sale was similar, save that it ended: ‘Un Amour tenant un flambeau plane dans les airs.’ I am grateful to Alastair Laing (see note 5) for having drawn these sales to my attention in connection with NG 1090. No one called William Jackson was entitled to the appellation ‘Sir’ in 1848 or 1849. The industrialist Sir William Jackson was not made a baronet until 1869. There was a sale by the executors of one W. Windall Jackson by Foster, London, 25 May 1854, but there was no correspondence between the 27 pictures then sold and those offered at the 1849 sale save, curiously, lot 73, described as ‘Boucher … A Nymph and Satyr’. Foster’s catalogues were typically terse in their lot descriptions but, were NG 1090 listed, one might have expected at least ‘Nymphs and a Satyr’. The reasonable assumption must therefore be that the so‐called Sir William Jackson and W. Windall Jackson were not the same person. In the case of the former the appellation ‘Sir’ may have been an error on the part of the auctioneer or the name of the seller may have been a fiction. Just as the identification of NG 1090 with the picture in the 1822 sale is almost certain given the measurements, the reference to the derivative print and the price realised, so the absence of any of these elements in the 1849 sale make the identification unlikely. In addition it would be inconsistent with Mrs Hollond’s claim made in 1880 to have possessed the painting for forty years. Probably the picture in the 1848 and 1849 sales was a copy or another rendering of the subject by Boucher or a follower and, as Alastair Laing has suggested, it may have been the picture previously in the Georges de Polivanoff sale, 29 November 1842 (Soullié 1907, no. 240). (Back to text.)
7 The provenance as stated by Bailey (1991) is incorrect. NG 1090 was presented to the Gallery by Ellen Hollond during her lifetime, not bequeathed by her, as is evident from a letter she wrote (in the picture dossier). She wrote to Frederic Burton (yet to be knighted) on 19 July 1880 from Stanmore Hall: ‘It gives me very great pleasure to hear from you, that you and the Trustees of the National Gallery, have accepted my little picture by Boucher – It has been in my possession for 40 years, and a great portion of that time, my dear husband and myself, looked forward to finding it a home worthy of its beauty, in the National Gallery – It will be such a pleasure to me to see it there by & by.’ Alastair Laing has suggested (letter of 20 April 1997, in the picture dossier) that, since she married in 1840 (18 March 1840: The Times, 20 March 1840, p. 7), NG 1090 may have been a wedding present ‘even before she had started her Paris salon, but, in that case, what symbolism!’ On his death in 1877 Robert Hollond, Liberal MP for Hastings 1837–52 and an aeronautics enthusiast, bequeathed Ellen a life interest only in most of his property, but made an absolute gift of all the furniture and effects at his town residence at 1 Upper Berkeley Street and in all his other residences: ‘Wills and Bequests’, Illustrated London News, 16 February 1878, p. 159. The absolute gift may have included NG 1090, which may, however, have belonged already to Ellen Hollond herself. The elaborate frame of NG 1090 has been dated by Edgar Harden to the end of the nineteenth century or beginning of the twentieth (letter of 19 August 1996 in the picture dossier, in which he stated that the frame shared certain characteristics with those made in the eighteenth century by the Paris frame maker Jean Chérin). However, Peter Schade considers it to have been made around 1760 but to have been extended too greatly to be the original (email of 20 August 2013).
For Ellen Hollond and her husband Robert, who was the fourth son of William Hollond of Grosvenor Palace and his wife, Harriet (née Pope; Illustrated London News, 12 January 1878, p. 47), see Patrick Waddington, ‘Hollond, Ellen Julia (1822–1884)’, ODNB. According to this, Robert and Ellen Hollond resided chiefly at 63 Portland Place, London, but also had (inter alia) a residence in Paris where they wintered increasingly after 1848, and from 1864 another at the Villa Allegria, Cannes. Among their earliest French friends was the painter Ary Scheffer, who portrayed Ellen in 1851 (National Gallery, NG 1169) and is said to have used her as the model for Saint Monica in his Saints Augustine and Monica of 1854 (National Gallery, NG 1170). The Hollonds were also acquainted with the dramatist Prosper Merimée, the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev and Mary Mohl, future fellow‐benefactor of the National Gallery (see Greuze, NG 1154). The Hollonds were patriotic but Francophile Britons: Robert, for example, contributed to a City of London fund for the relief of distress in Paris following the 1870–1 Franco‐Prussian War (The Times, 1 February 1871, p. 6), and Ellen bequeathed £5,000 to continue her work of providing English nurses for invalids in France (Waddington, ODNB). She was much appreciated among Liberal circles in France: it was said that as a foreigner there she ‘could bring together persons otherwise not easily in contact on the common ground of love of liberty and hatred of the Empire’ (obituary, The Times, 9 December 1884, p. 4).
It has been suggested that lines in the original version (1865) of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après‐midi d’un faune were probably inspired by NG 1090, which he saw on his visit to London in 1862–3 (Thibaudet 1926, p. 394): ‘J’allais, quand à mes pieds s’entremêlent, fleuries / De la pudeur d’aimer en ce lit hasardeux, / Deux dormeuses parmi l’extase d’être deux. / Je les saisis sans les désenlacer…’. This suggestion was doubted by Martin Davies as Mallarmé’s visit occurred many years before NG 1090 entered the Gallery, but he acknowledged that the poet may have seen the print (letter from Davies to Sir Eric Maclagan, 9 September 1935, in the picture dossier). Mallarmé may have seen the painting itself if the Hollonds ever hung it in one of their French homes or in their London home during 1862–3 if then in the Holland collection, but see note 16 below for another suggested source of inspiration for Mallarmé’s lines. (Back to text.)
8 The claim in Bailey and Hamilton 1991 (p. 423) that NG 1090 had never before been exhibited is incorrect. (Back to text.)
9 See Slatkin 1973, no. 78. (Back to text.)
10 Ibid. , no. 79. (Back to text.)
11 Laing 1986, no. 84, fig. 204; Méjanes and Joulie 2003, no. 4 (entry by F. Joulie). (Back to text.)
12 Manuscript note in Davies’s hand in the picture dossier. (Back to text.)
13 I am grateful to Alastair Laing for drawing my attention to this drawing and for his comments on it. My thanks also to Amy Marquis for sending me her photograph of it. (Back to text.)
14 Jean‐Richard 1978, no. 1412, where the print is stated to combine etching and engraving; another example is in the British Museum, inv. 2011,7059.16. The print’s dedicatee was Nicolas‐Joseph‐Joachim de Busscher (born Brussels 1734). The British Museum has an avant la lettre state of the engraving (inv. 2011,7059.16) given by Colin Harrison in honour of Antony Griffiths. (Back to text.)
15 Jean‐Richard 1978, no. 1620; Ananoff 1976, no. 519/1 and ill. p. 190. (Back to text.)
16 Reynolds 1980, p. 92 where illustrated. The miniature corresponds to Ananoff 1976, no. 519/14. A description by Paul Mantz in L’Artiste (21 February 1858) of a version of a miniature by Jacques Charlier in the collection of Théodore Dablin (which may be that now in the Wallace Collection) is said to have provided the starting point for lines in the original version (1865) of Mallarmé’s poem, L’après‐midi d’un faune: Souffrin‐le‐Breton 1982. See also note 7 above. (Back to text.)
17 According to Alastair Laing (letter, 3 August 2010), although he had not seen the plaque itself, the colours were so fresh that not only might it be French, but also eighteenth century. (Back to text.)
18 I am grateful to Alan Rubin for drawing my attention to this object. (Back to text.)
19 There are also pictures which have been attributed to Boucher of the same subject but with a different composition: (1) J.L. Picard, Paris, 26 March 1992, lot 3, pastel, diam. 26 cm; (2) eighteenth‐century French School, oil on canvas, 99 × 128 cm, inscribed top left: ‘F. BOUCHER’. (Back to text.)
20 On the sketch, see Laing 1986, no. 92 (entry by E.A. Standen). The whole sketch and the medallion at the left are also illustrated in Ananoff 1976, figs 1370 and 1508 respectively, and the sketch, in colour, in Vittet 2014, fig. 151, p. 222. (Back to text.)
21 See Museo del Prado. Últimas Adquisiciones 1995, no. 37, where dated by Luna to the period 1760–5. The sketch was previously with Cailleux, by whom catalogued in Cailleux 1964, no. 76, and Roland Michel 1975, no. 6. Alastair Laing has suggested that the painting for which this may have been a sketch, not itself described as an oval, was the most expensive picture by Boucher auctioned in the posthumous sale of the marquis de Cypierre, 10 March 1845 and following, lot 13 (note of 12 April 2014), here noted under Related Works C (5)). (Back to text.)
22 Catalogued as: ‘[Boucher] / La Nymphe Syrinx, poursuivie par le dieu Pan, se réfugie dans les roseaux au milieu d’autres Nymphes. Elle est nue, couchée sur des draperies blanches et rouges; ses pieds baignent dans l’eau.’ (Back to text.)
23 Catalogued as: ‘Boucher (François) / Pan poursuivant Syrinx. / La naïde poursuivie et prête à succomber implore la protection du fleuve Ladon, qui la change en roseau. / H. 50c, L. 60c.’ (Back to text.)
24 On the first recorded owner of these sketches, Joseph‐François Varanchan de Saint‐Geniès, in whose sale on 29 December 1777 and following they formed lot 3, see Alasseur 2012. (Back to text.)
25 The drawing was previously in the Paris sales of Mme (Saint‐Sauveur), 12 February 1776 and following, lot 109; Gaspard de Sireul, 3 December 1781 and following, lot 91; and Baron Cassel van Doorn, 30 May 1956, lot 15 (information kindly supplied by Alastair Laing). (Back to text.)
26 Described as: ‘Un beau Dessein de Boucher qui n’a point été contrépreuvé, Pan & Sirinx.’ (Back to text.)
27 Bjurström 1987, no. 90. (Back to text.)
28 As advised in a manuscript note sent to me 12 April 2014. (Back to text.)
29 Ananoff 1976, no. 346. (Back to text.)
30 Ibid. , no. 346/4, fig. 1007, and in relation to NG 1090 as ibid. , no. 519/8. (Back to text.)
31 Ill. Laing 1986, no. 92 (entry by E.A. Standen). (Back to text.)
32 For Sleeping Bacchantes watched by Satyrs, see Ananoff 1976, no. 515 and fig. 1421. (Back to text.)
33 Ibid. , no. 534, fig. 1485. Sold Sotheby’s, New York, 31 January 2013, lot 91 ($2,098,500, including premium). (Back to text.)
34 Laing 1986, p. 319, where is noted another drawing in red and black chalks, once in the de Sireul collection and apparently for the same figure. (Back to text.)
35 As Paul Ackroyd has advised. (Back to text.)
36 Udolpho van de Sandt noted that the label gives de Billy’s full name in Latin: Bailey and Hamilton 1991, p. 426, note 22. He has advised (email, 20 March, 2014) that details of the various documents on de Billy there stated to have been discovered by him were sent to Colin Bailey, to whom an enquiry was sent in 2014. (Back to text.)
37 The Athenaeum, no. 2762, 2 October 1880, p. 441, col. 1. I am grateful to Alastair Laing for this reference. (Back to text.)
38 Cook 1888, p. 370. (Back to text.)
39 Addison 1905, p. 248. (Back to text.)
40 Holmes 1927, p. 64. (Back to text.)
41 Davies 1957, p. 17. (Back to text.)
42 The error was pointed out by Bailey (in Bailey and Hamilton 1991, pp. 424 and 426, note 12), who, however, was wrong in stating that it was Davies’s. As Alastair Laing has pointed out (note of 12 April, 2014), the error goes back to Soullié 1907, no. 274, which gives Martenasie’s engraving the title ‘Syrinx, [page 67]poursuivie par le dieu Pan, se refugie dans les bras du fleuve Ledon [sic] qui la change en roseau’, and conflates it with the tondo that was in the Randon de Boisset sale. The error was repeated by Jean‐Richard (1978; see General References, above), and repeated in Wilson 1985, p. 98 and in National Gallery Illustrated General Catalogue, 1986, p. 65. (Back to text.)
43 Wilson 1985, p. 98. (Back to text.)
44 Bailey and Hamilton 1991, no. 50. (Back to text.)
45 For the painting see Ananoff 1976, no. 518, and for the engraving ibid. , no. 518/1. (Back to text.)
46 Ibid. , no. 533. An undated grisaille sketch of the subject ( ibid. , no. 535) has been assumed by Ananoff also to be of 1760, but is really the sketch for his no. 576, so should be dated to about 1763. (Back to text.)
47 Ibid. , no. 576. (Back to text.)
48 The Birth of Venus ( ibid. , no. 577) which was in the Jacqmin sale, 26 April–22 May 1773, lot 799, was according to the lot description 31.1 × 39.3 cm and apparently painted in 1764. From the inscription naming Boucher as First Painter to the King, J.C. Le Vasseur’s engraving after it was published in August 1765 or later. Alastair Laing advises that neither signature nor date were visible when what seems to be the much‐damaged original was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 12 January 1989, lot 159 (bought by Christophe Janet). One might note that most of the paintings in Jacqmin’s sale were small. (Back to text.)
49 See for example the discussion in MacLaren 1970, p. 126 (and notes) concerning the so‐called Rokeby Venus (NG 2057) by Diego Velázquez. It may also be noted that Rembrandt’s print Reclining Nude was known to Mariette and Gersaint, so presumably to others in eighteenth‐century France: Kolfin 2013, pp. 39, 40, note 3. (Back to text.)
50 For the print after Goltzius, see The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 3 (part 1), 1980: Netherlandish Artists. Henrik Goltzius, p. 321, fig. 48, and The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 3 (Commentary), 1982: Netherlandish Artists. Henrik Goltzius, pp. 354, 356. (Back to text.)
51 There is also a fragment in vertical format in the Louvre (wool and silk, 291 × 245 cm, inv. OAR 455), and a painted copy (oil on canvas, 41.3 × 67.9 cm) of the composition by a member of Boucher’s circle was sold at Christie’s, London, 26 January 2011, lot 289. A fragment of the cartoon is at the Abbaye de Chaalis, ill. in Standen 1986, fig. 7, p. 73; Standen also notes other extant examples of the tapestry ( ibid. , pp. 70–2). (Back to text.)
52 Constans 1995, vol. 1, p. 109, no. 604; Ananoff 1976, no. 483, fig. 1358. On deposit in the Mobilier national (Vittet 2014, fig. 158). (Back to text.)
53 Inv. 2718, on loan since 1929 from the Louvre to the Centre International de Synthèse, Paris, after Boucher, Neptune and Amymone, oil on canvas, 295 × 195 cm., inv. 2718; Ananoff 1976, no. 483/8, fig. 1364 (mis‐numbered as no. 483/7). (Back to text.)
54 Rykner 2013. The painting (oil on canvas, 98 × 150 cm) was given to the Louvre in 2013 by Marie‐Catherine Sahut through the Société des amis du Louvre and in memory of Marie Volle. Its pair, Venus and Cupid (oil on canvas, 97 × 152 cm), also dated 1752, was given the same year through the same Société, and also in memory of Marie Volle, by Christian and Nathalie Volle. (Information kindly supplied by Guillaume Faroult.) (Back to text.)
55 The cupid’s pose in NG 1090 was used in the following decade by Boucher in reverse, a wreath replacing the arrow, in his Allegory of Poetry (oil on canvas, 82 × 87 cm; St Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. 7751), reproduced in Nemilova 1986, p. 57. (Back to text.)
56 Bailey and Hamilton 1991, pp. 423–4. (Back to text.)
57 Ovid 1921 edn, pp. 51, 53. (Back to text.)
58 See the numerous works listed in Pigler 1974, vol. 2, pp. 199–201. (Back to text.)
59 The painting by Poussin is in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (inv. 718), and two paintings by Mignard are respectively in the Louvre and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston. On that in Houston, see Bailey and Hamilton 1991, no. 1. (Back to text.)
60 See Leribault 2002, nos P.81, P.84, and P. 218, painted respectively about 1719, 1720 and 1733. Fragonard’s painting, offered at Sotheby’s, New York, 22 May 1992, lot 75 (bought in), is in a private collection in Florence. (Back to text.)
61 See Gustin‐Gomez 2006, no. P.190. (Back to text.)
62 Christie’s, New York, 30 January 2014, lot 296 (sold $68,750); see Delaplanche 2004, no. P.12. (Back to text.)
63 Lesur and Aaron 2009, no. P.81. (Back to text.)
64 For example, Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide en latin et françois, divisées en XV livres, trans. Pierre du Ryer, new edn Amsterdam 1702, pp. 34–5, and l’abbé Banier’s translation published in Amsterdam in 1732 with engravings by Bernard Picart. (Back to text.)
65 Baudouin sale, Paris, 15 February 1770, lot 21. (Back to text.)
66 Boyer 1970, p. 154. (Back to text.)
67 ‘La folie des amans est d’exprimer leurs desirs avant d’en faire naître, c’est‐là ce qui les perd tous … Telle est la nature de l’amour: il naît dans le trouble & dans l’inquiétude; c’est là son berceau. Il ne s’agit pour se faire aimer, que d’inquiéter un Coeur; voilà tout le secret.’ Saint‐Mard 1749–50, p. 106. (Back to text.)
68 For the reference to Pan being here reduced to a harmless voyeur, see Posner in Bailey and Hamilton 1991, p. 68. Posner also notes that in NG 1090 and other paintings by Boucher there are ‘strong intimations of an erotic force that draws women together in an intimacy that goes beyond companionship’. (Back to text.)
69 Laing 1986, p. 293. (Back to text.)
70 Ibid. , where Laing suggests this on account of other pictures by Boucher in de Billy’s posthumous sale. (Back to text.)
71 NG 1090 was first hung with the other French School paintings in Gallery IX (now Room 44). (Back to text.)
72 As in what was then Room XIV (now Room 45) hanging between The Death of Procris (NG 55), then considered to be by Claude, and Poussin’s The Nurture of Bacchus (NG 39). (Back to text.)
73 Charles de Wailly sale, A.J. Paillet, Paris, 24 November 1788, part lot 50, 30 livres, 3 sols to Joly. Lot 50 was described as: ‘F. Boucher. / Deux Esquisses, toutes deux représentant l’Annonciation. Sur T.[oile], 4 pieds de haut sur 2 de large. Pan & Syrinx, Esquisse sur T., de 16 pouces sur 12; & une Académie peinte.’ There is a significant discrepancy between the price achieved for NG 1090 when it was sold in 1784 and 1785 and that achieved when it was supposedly sold three years later, together with three other sketches by Boucher – even allowing for the facts that it would not have been fresh to the market and that Boucher’s appeal was suffering under the assault of neoclassicism. The reference to the Pan and Syrinx being an ‘esquisse’, something which NG 1090 clearly is not, supports the idea that the picture sold in 1788 was not NG 1090. In addition, the description of the lot in the De Wailly sale suggests that the Pan and Syrinx was in vertical format. Charles De Wailly had been a pupil of Jacques‐François Blondel (for summary information on whom see the entry on Nattier’s Manon Balletti, NG 5586). He won the Prix de Rome in 1752, became a member of the Académie royale d’architecture in 1767 and, unusually for an architect, also became a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture four years later on account of his abilities as a draughtsman. Besides studying at the Académie de France in Rome (1754–7), he worked in Italy during the years 1771–3. The 1788 sale catalogue states that most of the paintings being sold had been acquired by him there. A plaster bust of De Wailly by Augustin Pajou is in the Palais des Beaux‐Arts, Lille; a marble bust by the same sculptor of his wife, Adelaïde‐Flore Belleville, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She remarried after his death, becoming the comtesse de Fourcroy, and sold a number of paintings from her collection in 1810, all of which were stated in the sale catalogue to have been in Charles De Wailly’s collection. (Back to text.)
Abbreviations
Technical abbreviations
- Macro‐XRF
- Macro X‐ray fluorescence
- XRD
- X‐ray powder diffraction
List of archive references cited
- London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG1090: Davies, manuscript note
- London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG1090: Edgar Harden, letter of 19 August 1996, 19 August 1996
- London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG1090: Ellen Hollond, letter
- London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG1090: Alastair Laing, letter, 20 April 1997
- London, National Gallery, Archive, curatorial dossier for NG1090: Martin Davies, letter to Sir Eric Maclagan, 9 September 1935
- London, National Gallery, Archive: Alastair Laing, letter, 3 August 2010
- London, National Gallery, Archive: Alastair Laing, note, 12 April 2014
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- ODNB (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), http://www.oxforddnb.com, online edn, Oxford 2004–
- Ovid 1921
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Frank Justus Miller, 2nd edn, London and Cambridge MA 1921
- Pigler 1974
- Pigler, A., Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, 2 or 3 vols, 2nd edn, Budapest 1974
- Poynter 1899–1900
- Poynter, Edward J., ed., The National Gallery, 3 vols, London 1899–1900
- Reynolds 1980
- Reynolds, Graham, Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Miniatures, London 1980
- Roland Michel 1975
- Roland Michel, Marianne, ed., Éloge de l’Ovale. Peintures et pastels du XVIIIe siècle français (exh. cat. Galerie Cailleux, Paris), Paris 1975
- Rosenberg 1979a
- Rosenberg, Pierre, Chardin, 1699–1779 (exh. cat. Grand Palais, Paris; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Cleveland 1979
- Rykner 2013
- Rykner, Didier, ‘Deux tableaux de Michel‐Ange Challe offerts au Louvre’, La Tribune de l’Art, 23 December 2013
- Saint‐Mard 1749–50
- Saint‐Mard, Toussaint Rémond de, Œuvres de Monsieur Rémond de St‐Mard … Discours sur la nature du dialogue. Dialogues [Nouveaux dialogues] des dieux, Amsterdam 1749–50, 1
- Slatkin 1973
- Slatkin, Regina Shoolman, François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings (exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Art Institute of Chicago), Washington DC 1973
- Souffrin‐le‐Breton 1982
- Souffrin‐le‐Breton, Eileen, ‘The Young Mallarmé and the Boucher Revival’, in Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry: New essays in honour of Lloyd Austin, eds M. Bowie, et al., Cambridge 1982, 282–313
- Soullié 1907
- Soullié, Louis, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint et dessiné de F. Boucher, suivi de la liste des gravures exécutées d’après ses ouvrages…Établi par les soins de M. L. Soullié, avec la collaboration de M. Ch. Masson, Paris 1907
- Standen 1986
- Standen, Edith, ‘The Amour des Dieux: a series of Beauvais tapestries after Boucher’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 1986, 19/20, 1984/1985, 63–84
- Stephens 1880
- Stephens, Frederic George, in The Athenaeum, 2 October 1880, 2762, 441, 1
- Thibaudet 1926
- Thibaudet, Albert, La Poésie de Stéphane Mallarmé, Paris 1926 (1913)
- Times 20 March 1840
- The Times, 20 March 1840, 7
- Times 1 February 1871
- The Times, 1 February 1871, 6
- Times 9 December 1884
- The Times, 9 December 1884, 4
- Vittet 2014
- Vittet, Jean, Les Gobelins au siècle des Lumières. Un âge d’or de la manufacture royale, Paris 2014
- Waddington
- Waddington, Patrick, ‘Hollond, Ellen Julia (1822–1884)’, in ODNB (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), http://www.oxforddnb.com, online edn, 2004–
- Who was Who
- Who was Who, http://www.ukwhoswho.com, London 1920–2014 (online edn, 2014)
- Wilson 1985
- Wilson, Michael, The National Gallery Schools of Painting: French Paintings before 1800, London 1985
- Wilson 1986
- Wilson, Gillian, ‘A secretaire by Philippe‐Claude Montigny’, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 1986, 14, 121–6
- Yavchitz‐Koehler 1987
- Yavchitz‐Koehler, Sylvie, ‘Un dessin d’Hubert Robert: Le salon du bailli de Breteuil à Rome’, Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, 1987, 5/6, 369–78
List of exhibitions cited
- Brussels and London 2014–15
- Brussels, Centre for Fine Arts; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Rubens and His Legacy: From Van Dyck to Cézanne, 2014–15
- Paris, Philadelphia and Fort Worth 1991–2
- Paris, Grand Palais; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David, 1991–2 (exh. cat.: Bailey and Hamilton 1991)
- Tokyo 1982
- Tokyo, Metropolitan Museum, François Boucher, 1982 (exh. cat.: Sutton 1982)
The Organisation of the Catalogue
This is a catalogue of the eighteenth‐century French paintings in the National Gallery. Following the example of Martin Davies’s 1957 catalogue of the Gallery’s French paintings, the catalogue includes works by or after some artists who were not French: Jean‐Etienne Liotard, who was Swiss, Alexander Roslin, who was Swedish, and Philippe Mercier, born in Berlin of French extraction but working mainly in England.
Works are catalogued by alphabetical order of artist, and multiple works by an artist are arranged in order of date or suggested date. Works considered to be autograph come first, followed by works in which I believe the studio played a part, those which are studio productions, and later copies. Artists’ biographies are summary only.
The preliminary essay and all entries and artist biographies are by Humphrey Wine unless initialled by one of the authors listed on p. 4.
Each entry is arranged as follows:
Title: The traditional title of each painting has been adopted except where misleading to do so.
Date: The date, or the suggested date, is given immediately below the title. The reason for any suggested date is explained in the body of the catalogue entry.
Media and measurementS: Height precedes width, and measurements (in centimetres) are of the painted surface to the nearest millimetre ignoring insignificant variations. Additional information on media and measurements, where appropriate, is provided in the Technical Notes.
Inscriptions: Where the work is inscribed, the inscription is given immediately after the note of media and measurements. Information is derived from observation, whether by the naked eye or with the help of a microscope, by the cataloguer and a member of the Conservation Department. The use of square brackets indicates letters or numerals that are not visible, but reasonably presumed once to have been so.
Provenance: Information on former owners is provided under Provenance and the related endnotes.
A number of significant owners, including Sir Bernard Eckstein; Ernest William Beckett,
2nd Baron Grimthorpe; John Arthur and Mary Venetia James; Yolande Lyne Stephens; Sir
John Pringle; Mrs Mozelle Sassoon; James Stuart of Dunearn; John Webb; and Consuelo
and Emilie Yznaga, are discussed further in an appendix to this volume on the National
Gallery website, ‘Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (see
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/national‐gallery‐catalogues/former‐owners‐of‐the‐eighteenth‐century‐french‐paintings
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-resources/national-gallery-catalogues/former-owners-of-the-eighteenth-century-french-paintings-in-the-national-gallery-1
).
Exhibitions: Long‐term loans to other collections have been included under this heading, but they do not appear in the List of Exhibitions at the end of the catalogue. Exhibitions in that list appear in date order.
Related Works: Dimensions are given where known, and works are in oil on canvas unless otherwise
indicated. They have not been verified by
first hand
first‐hand
inspection. Dimensions of drawings or prints, other than in captions to illustrations,
are not given unless they are exceptional. Dimensions are given in centimetres, but
other units of measurement used in, say, an auction catalogue have been retained.
The metric equivalent of an Ancien Régime pouce is 2.7 cm and (after 1825) that of
an inch is 2.54 cm. In the case of prints, where measurements are given, it has not
always been possible to determine whether they are of the plate or the image.
Technical Notes: All works in the catalogue were examined in the Conservation Studio by Paul Ackroyd and Ashok Roy of the Conservation and Scientific Departments respectively, generally together with the author of the catalogue entry. The records of these observations were used to compile the catalogue’s Technical Notes. In support of these studies, paint samples for examination and analysis were taken by Ashok Roy from approximately 60 per cent of the paintings in order to establish the nature and constitution of ground layers, the identity of certain pigments, to investigate possible colour changes in paint layers and to answer curatorial enquiries relating to layer structure (as determined by paint cross‐sections). A few more works had already been sampled, mainly in conjunction with past conservation treatments, and the observations from these past studies were reviewed and incorporated. These studies were carried out by Ashok Roy, Marika Spring, Joyce Plesters and Aviva Burnstock. Paint samples and cross‐sections were examined by optical microscopy, and instrumental analysis of pigments was based largely on scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X‐ray analysis. Early in the cataloguing programme, some work with X‐ray diffraction analysis ( XRD ) was carried out for further characterisation of certain pigments. Some of these results had already been published separately; these papers are cited in the catalogue text. Similarly, any published analyses of the paint binder are cited, or if not published then reference is made to the reports in the Scientific Department files. The majority of the [page 36]analyses of the organic component of paint samples from works in this catalogue were carried out by Raymond White.
At a later stage in the cataloguing programme Rachel Billinge carried out infrared reflectography on 30 of the 72 works using an OSIRIS digital infrared scanning camera with an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) array sensor (8 had already been examined by infrared imaging, usually in connection with a conservation treatment). At the same time she reviewed the entries, adding observations from technical imaging (both X‐radiography and infrared reflectography) and incorporating some additional details about materials and techniques from stereomicroscopy (photomicrographs were made of 12 works). Where X‐radiographs have been made, the individual plates were scanned and composite X‐ray images assembled. Some, but not all, were further processed to remove the stretcher bars from the digital image. Some further paint samples from a few works for which there were still outstanding questions at this stage in the cataloguing programme were examined and analysed. These analyses were carried out by Marika Spring, with contributions on individual paintings from Joanna Russell, Gabriella Macaro, Marta Melchiorre di Crescenzo, Helen Howard and David Peggie.
Macro‐X‐ray fluorescence scanning was carried out by Marika Spring and Rachel Billinge on one work, Perronneau’s pastel, A Girl with a Kitten (NG 3588), to provide fuller understanding of its means of creation than had been available from earlier analyses of the materials. The pastel was scanned during the summer of 2015 thanks to the loan of a Bruker M6 Jetstream macro‐X‐ray fluorescence scanner by Delft University of Technology through collaboration with Dr Joris Dik, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Chair, Materials in Art and Archeology, Department of Materials Science and Dr Annelies van Loon, now Paintings Research Scientist at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This mobile system, the first commercially available macro‐XRF scanner, was developed by Bruker Nano GmbH in close collaboration with Antwerp University and Delft University of Technology (see Alfeld 2013, pp. 760–7). This examination included transmitted infrared reflectography and some further directed sampling to aid interpretation of the new results.
Frames: Information is given only in the case of a frame which is, or which is likely to be, original to the painting.
Text: With the exception of the Lagrenée, which was not formally acquired until July 2016, the entries take account of information and opinions of which the cataloguers were aware as at 30 June 2016.
Lifespan dates, where known, are given in the Provenance section and in the Index.
General References: These do not provide a list of every published reference. The annual catalogues published by the Gallery before the First World War mainly repeat the information in the first Gallery catalogue in which the painting in question was published. Consequently, only the first catalogue and later catalogues containing additional or revised information have been referenced. In all relevant cases references have been given to Martin Davies’s 1946 and 1957 catalogues. In the case of works acquired after 1957, reference is made to the interim catalogue entry published in the relevant National Gallery Report. No reference to entries in the Gallery’s Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London 2001) has been given since they contained no previously unpublished information. Other references are to catalogues raisonnés and other significant publications concerning the painting in question.
Bibliography: This includes all references cited in the endnotes to catalogue entries other than references to archival sources, which are given in full in the endnotes. Cited articles from newspapers, magazines, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Who Was Who have usually been accessed via their respective online portals.
List of Exhibitions: This is a list of exhibitions in which the paintings have appeared. The list is in date order. The author of the accompanying exhibition catalogue or catalogue entry is given where known. Exhibition catalogues are included in the Bibliography, by author.
About this version
Version 3, generated from files HW_2018__16.xml dated 06/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Entries for NG1090, NG2897, NG4078, NG5583, NG6422, NG6435, NG6445, NG6495, NG6592, NG6598 and NG6600-NG6601 marked for publication.
Cite this entry
- Permalink (this version)
- https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9M-000B-0000-0000
- Permalink (latest version)
- https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E7B-000B-0000-0000
- Chicago style
- Wine, Humphrey. “NG 1090, Syrinx seeking Refuge from Pan with a Sister River‐Nymph”. 2018, online version 3, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9M-000B-0000-0000.
- Harvard style
- Wine, Humphrey (2018) NG 1090, Syrinx seeking Refuge from Pan with a Sister River‐Nymph. Online version 3, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9M-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 27 March 2025).
- MHRA style
- Wine, Humphrey, NG 1090, Syrinx seeking Refuge from Pan with a Sister River‐Nymph (National Gallery, 2018; online version 3, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E9M-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 27 March 2025]