Gerald Wilde, British 1905-1986 - Inferno; oil on canvas, titled to the stretcher 'Inferno', 70.5 x 91.5 cm (ARR) Note: Wilde exhibited with the Hanover Gallery in the 1940s and 50s as well as having a solo show at the ICA in 1955. His work was admired in print by important post-war critics such as John Berger and David Sylvester and owned by influential collectors Peter Watson, Sir Kenneth Clark and Sir Edward Marsh. His works are in the Tate and Arts Council Collection amongst others.
Gerald Wilde (British 1905-1986), "Woman & Child", 1963, watercolor and gouache on paper, red and black figural abstract painting, signed, dated, and titled at lower right, framed. Sight approx. h. 14", w. 12"; Overall h. 18.75", w. 16.75", d. 0.5".
*Gerald Wilde (1905-1986) *Gerald Wilde (1905-1986) Night Scene signed and dated 'WILDE/51', oil on paper 51 x 61.5cm Exhibited: The October Gallery, 'Gerald Wilde Retrospective 1926-86', Spring 1988. *Artist's Resale Right may apply to this lot. Condition report: overall: 81 x 92cm surface dirt, unexamined out of frame.
§ Gerald Wilde (British 1905-1986) Series B, No. 34, 1955 signed and titled (to reverse), gouache, crayon and pencil on paper (54cm x 75cm (21.25in x 29.5in))
§ Gerald Wilde (British 1905-1986) Cosmic Man, Series B, No. 46 signed, inscibed and numbered in pen (to reverse), watercolour, gouache and crayon on paper (55cm x 76cm (21.75in x 29.8in))
ARR * Wilde (Gerald, 1905-1986). Dancer, 1974, colour p astels on paper, showing ladders on a blue ground, signed and dated lower right, 89 x 60 cm (35 x 23.7 ins), framed and glazed (Qty: 1)
Gerald Wilde, British 1905-1986- Street scene; gouache on buff paper, signed and dated 41, 36x53cm (ARR) Please refer to department for condition report Wash brown frame with mount and glazing.
Gerald Wilde, pale blue silk twill crêpe scarf,c.1947, printed with black abstract design for Ascher, LondonGerald Wilde (1905-1986) was born in London and studied at the Chelsea School of Art under Graham Sutherland. There he met Henry Moore and they became lifelong friends. Zika and Lida Ascher commissioned artists to design for their fabrics and scarves. Gerald Wilde was commissioned in 1947 to produce abstract art printed on to the scarves.
black ink and coloured chalks on paper, signed lower right, 215 x 152 mm (8.5 x 6 ins), period frame, glazed, with handwritten note about the artist pasted to back of frame One of a series of drawings of Brighton Pier, completed by Wilde in 1938. He studied at Chelsea School of Art and was taught there by Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore, and his work was admired by fellow artists Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. An article on the drawings of Gerald Wilde by Brian Robb appeared in Signature, New Series, No. 7, 1948.
Gerald Wilde (1905-1986) - Series B31, 1955 gouache on paper 22 x 29 1/2 in., 56 x 76 cm IMPORTANT: This lot is sold subject to Artists Resale Rights, details of which can be found in our Terms and Conditions.
GERALD WILDE (1905-1986) A working for "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (completed 1973), silkscreen print, signed by the artist, dated '75, 80 x 105 cm (Provenance: given to the present owners by the artist in gratitude) (ILLUSTRATED)
Gerald Wilde (1905-1986) Fata Morgana signed 'WILDE' (lower centre) and signed again 'WILDE' (on the frame) oil on canvasboard 22 x 15½ in. (55.9 x 39.4 cm.)
COMPOSITION 1948 57x68.5cm.; 22½x27in. signed and dated 48 gouache PROVENANCE Alfred Hecht, and thence by bequest to the present owner's family EXHIBITED London, The October Gallery, Gerald Wilde, Spring 1988 NOTE Gerald Wilde attended Chelsea School of Art from 1926-31 and subsequently studied under Percy Hague Jowett and H. S. Williamson from 1932-34. He was greatly influenced by the aesthetic theories expoused by Clive Bell in his book Art, and was Inspired by the abstract surrealism of Picasso, Miró and Klee. Wilde lost much of his work to the devastating Blitz of 1941 whilst he was serving with the Pioneer Corps. Despite the destructive nature of war, the experience was also a source of great inspiration for him. The present work dates from the immediate post-war era. Overlapping layers of gouache are built up in deliberate strokes and an armature of black lines form ghostly abstracted figures which dominate the foreground. Often categorized as Abstract Expressionist, Wilde's style is difficult to define: "You cannot classify Wilde's art. It is not representative; and neither is it abstract." (Joyce Cary, ICA exhibition catalogue, 1955). A richly mobile work with bold colouring and passages of impasto, Composition 1948 is a striking example of Wilde's oeuvre. In 1949 he met the author Joyce Carey. Wilde was said to be the inspiration for the artist character 'Gulley Jimson' in Carey's book The Horse's Mouth (1944), later adapted for a film starring Alec Guinness in 1958. Wilde's contribution to Britain's post-war art scene was recognized when he was given a retrospective exhibition at the progressive ICA in 1955. In the 1950s Wilde spent time in St Ebba's Mental Hospital and consequently abandoned painting for twenty years. It was not until the 1970s that he began to paint again. In 1979 the October Gallery held a solo exhibition and has continued to exhibit his work ever since.
Small 4 o. Original rose cloth, covers with gilt ornaments after Charles Shannon, gilt-lettered on spine, uncut (spine lightly soiled and bumped at ends, few pale spots and wrinkles on rear cover, light offsetting on endleaves). Provenance : Rowland Strong (1865-1924, presentation inscription); Albert F. Madlener (bookplate); Anonymous owner (sold Sotheby's New York, 14 February 1986, lot 196); Anonymous owner (sold Sotheby's New York, 10 December 1993, lot 595). FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY WILDE TO ROWLAND STRONG on the blank page facing the title: "Rowland Strong with the author's compliments. February 99. Oscar Wilde." 1,000 copies were issued in February 1899. A fine association copy, presented to Strong, a friend of Wilde and Lord Douglas and the Paris correspondent for the Observer and the New York Times. He was also a notorious anti-semite and homosexual, and one of the few people who maintained contact with Wilde during and after his imprisonment at Reading. At Wilde's funeral in 1900, Robert Ross included Strong on a short list of loyal friends "who had shown kindness to him during or after his imprisonment." This list and a card reading "A tribute to his literary achievements and distinction" was placed on a wreath of laurels at the head of Wilde's coffin ( Letters, pp.853-56, 14 December 1900). Strong's major claim to fame came not through his friendship with Wilde but through his entanglements with the Dreyfus Affair. His exact role in the prosecution, deportation and eventual vindication of Alfred Dreyfus is murky, but he was the best friend of Col. Esterhazy who was later implicated in forging the primary piece of evidence against Dreyfus. The dating of this inscription is important in relation to the events of the Dreyfus Affair. Zola had published his famous defense of Dreyfus, "J'Accuse," in January 1898. Following its publication, Esterhazy found himself increasingly shunned (if not attacked) by the literary members of society. In the Spring of 1899 he was virtually without friends, except for Strong and by extension Wilde, who had met Esterhazy through Strong and quickly became platonically enamored of him. In Esterhazy, Wilde perceived a fellow victim of society, forced to spend life on the run. According to his biographer Richard Ellman, Wilde leaned across the dinner table and said to Esterhazy in early 1899, "The innocent always suffer, Monsieur le Commandant; it is their metier." Esterhazy, so taken into Wilde's confidence, then confessed (Ellman, p.564). This dinner changed the course of history: Strong sent an article the following day to The New York Times exposing Esterhazy, forcing him to flee to Belgium and London. By February 1899 a new administration favoring revision was in power and the reexamination of the Dreyfus case was underway. Esterhazy and Strong were no longer speaking. Wilde apparently also fell into Esterhazy's disfavor, and never spoke about his role, or lack thereof, in Esterhazy's exposure. Mason 381.
Le peintre animalier La Rochenoire signed 'Manet' (lower right) pastel on canvas 21 7/8 x 13 7/8 in. (55.7 x 35.3 cm.) Drawn in 1882 PROVENANCE Emil-Charles-Julien de la Rochenoire, Paris. J. Nicolas, Paris (by 28 April 1894). Maurice Joyant, Paris (1894). M.G. Dortu (by 1955). Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York. Acquired from the above, 1987. LITERATURE T. Duret, Histoire d'Edouard Manet et de son oeuvre, Paris, 1926, p. 299, no. 70. J. Meier-Graefe, Edouard Manet, Munich, 1912, pl. 184 (illustrated). E. Moreau-N‚laton, Manet racont‚ par lui-mˆme, Paris, 1926, vol. II, p. 98 (illustrated, fig. 321). A. Tabarant, Manet, histoire catalographique, Paris, 1931, p. 507, no. 84. P. Jamot, G. Wildenstein and M.L. Bataille, Manet, Paris, 1932, p. 123, no. 520 (illustrated, pl. 227). J. Rewald, Edouard Manet. Pastels, Oxford, 1947, pp. 48 and 52 (illustrated, p. 39, pl. 25). A. Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1947, p. 464, no. 538 (illustrated, p. 619). S. Orienti, The Complete Works of Edouard Manet, Milan, 1967, p. 121, no. 415 (illustrated, p. 120; dated 1882-1883). D. Rouart and S. Orienti, Tout l'oeuvre peint d'Edouard Manet, Paris, 1970, p. 121, no. 421 (illustrated, p. 120). D. Rouart and D. Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, catalogue raisonn‚, pastels, aquarelles et dessins, Paris, 1975, vol. II, p. 26, no. 66 (illustrated, p. 27). E. Darragon, Manet, Paris, 1991, p. 204 (illustrated in color, p. 205, fig. 126). J. Wilson-Bareau, Manet by Himself, London, 1991, p. 313, no. 211 (illustrated in color, p. 272; dated 1878-1880). A. Krell, Manet and the Painters of Contemporary Life, London, 1996, p. 204 (illustrated, p. 115, fig. 103). EXHIBITION Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Exposition des oeuvres de Edouard Manet, January 1884, no. 149. Paris, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Exposition d'art moderne, June-July 1912, no. 32 (illustrated; catalogue reproduced in Les Arts, August 1912, p. VIII). Tokyo, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Masterpieces of French Painting, June-July 1986 (illustrated in color). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, May 1987-October 1996 (on extended loan). NOTES Manet never received during his career a single commission for a portrait. The sitter for the present work, Emil-Charles-Julien de la Rochenoire, was a close friend of Manet's and a painter in his own right who specialized in the depiction of animals. Manet's sitters were often friends willing to pose as a favor, or willing to lend their spouse or child for the afternoon. Appearing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the Exposition posthume Manet in January 1884 (following Manet's death in April 1883), the present work was simply titled Portrait. Chiefly recognized as a great painter, his finest productions in his later years consist of small still-lifes and portraits in oils or pastel. He preferred to make portraits of his numerous visitors in pastel because the medium was easier and quicker to work in than oil. Likewise he frequently turned to pastels often in his later years when his illness made it difficult for him to undertake larger works. Many of his sitters came to Manet's studio because the artist was no longer able to join his friends at the caf‚s. Unlike Manet's famous portrait of Emile Zola, the painting of La Rochenoire does not depict the tools and accoutrements of the artist or any indication that he is anyone but an ordinary man. Although his name is aristocratic, he is portrayed as a thoroughly Baudelairian modern man dressed in the black suit associated with cosmopolitan anonymity. As recounted by the great dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1924, the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro once exclaimed that "Manet was greater than us; he was able to make light out of black". La Rochenoire's rosy face appears friendly and warm, yet passive and disinterested; his languid eyes turn away from the viewer. The sketchy background belies the fact that Manet carefully constructed each of his works and left nothing unfinished to his taste. The airiness lends itself to nature and the heightened pastels in colors of blue and pink mimic foliage energizing the face drawn in warm tones. One comes away with the impression that Manet strove not for an illusionistic portrait of his friend but a study of light and dark, highlight and shadow.
Portrait de Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier (Jeune femme en robe du bal) oil on canvas 393/4 x 31 7/8 in. (101 x 81 cm.) Painted circa 1879 PROVENANCE Mme. Manet, Paris. Gustave Manet, Paris (a gift from the above in 1884). Berthe Morisot (Mme. EugŠne Manet), Paris (by descent from the above after his death in December 1884). M. Ernest Rouart, Paris. Mme. Ernest Rouart (Julie Manet), Paris (by descent from the above). LITERATURE T. Duret, Histoire d'Edouard Manet et de son Oeuvre, Paris, 1902, no. 237. T. Duret, 1919, no. 237. E. Moreau-N‚laton, Manet racont‚ par lui-mˆme, vol. II, Paris, 1926, pp. 70-71, fig. 276, no. 274. A. Tabarant, Manet, histoire catalographique, Paris, 1931, no. 313. P. Jamot, G. Wildenstein and M.L. Bataille, Manet, vol. I, Paris, 1932, no. 374, p. 165, and vol. II, no. 166 (illustrated p. 66). M. Dormoy, 'La Collection Ernest Rouart', Formes, April, 1932, p. 258 (illustrated). G. Jedlicka, Manet, Zurich, 1941, pp. 304-307. M. Robida, Le Salon Charpentier et les Impressionistes, Paris, 1958, pl. XXV. D. Rouart and S. Orienti, Tout l'oeuvre peint d'Edouard Manet, Paris, 1970, no. 284. D. Rouart and D. Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, catalogue raisonn‚. Paintings, vol. I, Lausanne-Paris, 1975, no. 304, p. 238 (illustrated p. 239). F. Cachin, Manet, London, 1991, no. 23 (illustrated p. 239). B. Archer Brombert, Edouard Manet - Rebel in a Frock Coat, Boston, 1996 (illustrated fig. 58). EXHIBITION Paris, Grand Palais, Salon d'Automne, 1905, no. 14. St. Petersburg, Institut fran‡ais, Centennale de l'art fran‡ais, 1912, no. 408. Paris, Manzi-Joyant et Cie., Art moderne, June-July, 1913, no. 61. Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Oeuvres des XIXŠme et XXŠme siŠcles, 1925, no.76. Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Oeuvres de Manet au profit des Amis du Luxembourg, April-May 1928, no. 22. Lyons, Mus‚e des Beaux-Arts, Les grands courants de la peinture contemporaine, de Manet … nos jours, 1949, no. 70. Toronto, Toronto Art Gallery; Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art; Washington, Phillips Collection; San Fransisco, California Palace and Portland Art Museum, Berthe Morisot and her circle, 1952-1954, no. 27. Marseille, Mus‚e Cantini, Manet, 1961, no. 28. NOTES "A Isabelle cette mirabelle et la plus belle c'est Isabelle" EugŠne Manet in a letter to Isabelle Lemonnier, 1880 Isabelle Lemonnier was the daughter of Alexandre Gabriel Lemonnier, Crown jeweller to Napoleon III. Her link with the artistic milieu of 1870s Paris came through her elder sister, Marguerite, who was married to Georges Charpentier, the progressive publisher of Naturalist writers Flaubert, Zola and Daudet. As an off-shoot from his publishing house, Charpentier also established a gallery linked to the periodical La Vie moderne in order to support the Impressionists. In the spring of 1880, he staged Manet's first substantial one-man show since 1867 at the new gallery. Interestingly, of the twenty-five works Manet chose to exhibit at La Vie moderne in 1880, a third were, like the present work, portraits. Marguerite and Georges Charpentier together hosted a celebrated salon in the rue de Grenelle from the mid-1870s until the 1890s. Manet was a regular at these soir‚es. Marguerite had been one of the earliest supporters of Renoir, and Renoir memorably returned the compliment in a lavish portrait of her and her children Georgette and Paul, which is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Isabelle Lemonnier became the subject of Manet's attentions and affections at the end of the 1870s. Over a period of three or four years around 1880 he painted her six times in oil at his studio on the rue d'Amsterdam in Paris. Four of this series are now housed in public collections - namely the Dallas and Philadelphia Museums of Art (W.302 & 303), the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen (W.299), and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (W.300). The present work is, along with the St Petersburg example, executed in the largest format. In a review of the 1880 exhibition at La Vie moderne, the critic Gustave Goetschy turned his attention to Manet's talent for portraiture: 'His characters live and move in an atmosphere all their own. Everything about them and around them is true. Moreover he has a particularly accurate feeling for gestures and attitudes. Since he wants to preserve in his work all the charm and sincerity of his first impression, he works quickly, indicating with broad and bright brush strokes the movement of the body, its anatomy and colour, enveloping it in the appropriate general tone...He almost always poses his model in strong light, even in the cruel and brilliant clarity of actual sunlight' (quoted in G. Heard Hamilton, Manet and his Critics, Yale, 1986, p. 228). The sequence of the six works has not been fully agreed upon. It has been suggested that the present work might have been the first in the series on the basis that it fits the descritption of a work in the artist's studio in 1878 described by Manet's friend and biographer, Antonin Proust. Proust reports the discussion of what might well be the present work between Manet and the English painter Frederic Leighton, who was visiting Manet's studio on the occasion of the 1878 Paris World's Fair. 'When I take up something', Manet said to Leighton, 'I am most afraid that the model will disappoint me, that I will not be able to conduct such a number of sittings and under the conditions that I need.' In terms of mood, the present work shares most in common with the Philadelphia picture. In both works Isabelle is dressed in an evening gown with her arms rather formally crossed. In its small size and horizontal format however, the Philadelphia work lacks the ambition of the present work. Of the four other examples from the series, all are in portrait format and three - the Copenhagen, St Petersburg and Dallas pictures - depict Isabelle in outdoor clothing. Isabelle, to judge by the relative frequency with which she sat to Manet, would seem to have been fulfilled his requirements as a dependable model. However, something other than purely Isabelle's reliability might have been at the heart of his commitment to her. By 1880, Manet's health was declining and he began a course of hydrotherapy treatment at Bellevue, near Paris. Over the summer of that year, as he convalesced, he wrote around twenty playful letters to Isabelle from Bellevue, often adding delicate little watercolour drawings to teh letters, as was his habit at the time (fig. ). One notable example contains a drawing of a mirabelle plum and the short rhyme, 'A Isabelle/Cette mirabelle/Et la plus belle/C'est Isabelle!' Another gently chastises her for not replying to him. A third carries the flirtation forward in signing off by saying how he would send her a kiss 'if he dared.' Etienne Moreau-N‚laton, the collector of Manet's work who donated Le d‚jeuner sur l'herbe (Paris, Mus‚e d'Orsay; W.67) to the French state in 1906, commented on the artist's relationship with Isabelle in 1880: 'During his stay at Bellevue, his thoughts were endlessly carried away by [Isabelle], entrusted to brief notes, decorated with tiny watercolours, or supplemented with some elegant delicacies...The tone of these notes is the tone of a conversation spoken in joking ease.' On Manet's death in 1883, Portrait de Isabelle Mademoiselle Lemonnier passed to the younger of his two brothers, Gustave. When Gustave in turn died the following year, the picture was bequeathed to Berthe Morisot, Manet's frequent model and erstwhile pupil, as well as the wife of EugŠne, the artist's only surviving brother. She hung the picture in her home alongside several other of her former master's works. Portrait de Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier is visible in the background of Morisot's tender portrait of her daughter, Julie, playing the violin at their Paris house on the rue Weber in 1893. An important Manet retrospective was held at the famous third Salon d'Automne in 1905 - the salon of the Fauves. The portrait of Isabelle Lemonnier was among the twenty-five oils exhibited, lent from the collection of Julie Manet who had inherited the picture on the death of her mother, Berthe. The picture was exhibited under the enigmatic title of Jeune femme en robe de bal and was shown alongside a mouth-watering line-up of Manet's portraiture, including pictures of the artist's parents, M. et Mme. Auguste Manet, Emile Zola (both Paris, Mus‚e d'Orsay; W.30 & 128), Eva GonzalŠs (London, National Gallery; W.154), and Berthe Morisot … l'‚ventail (Private collection; W.229).
Girl playing with a dog and a cat (said to be a Portrait of Marie-Madeleine Colombe) oil on canvas, circular 271/2 in. (69.8 cm.) diam. PROVENANCE (Probably) Marie-Catherine Riggieri (1751-1830), known as Mlle Colombe, chƒteau de Saint-Brice; sold with the chƒteau in 1805, to M. Revanaz, who resold the chƒteau to M. de Guy, mayor of Saint-Brice, and by descent to his son-in-law Colonel de Mondonville, thence to his widow Madame de Mondonville, by whom sold to Ren‚ Gimpel and the marquis de Biron, as of 1906. with Wildenstein & Co, from whom acquired by Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), Paris. Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (1914-99), Tel Aviv. LITERATURE P. de Nolhac, J.-H. Fragonard, 1732-1806. With a catalogue of paintings sold at auction from 1770 to 1905, by H. Pannier, Paris, 1906, illustrated between pp. 112-13. A. Dayot, 'Fragonard', L'Art et les artistes (special issue) 5, no. 27, June-July 1907, illustrated p. 151. A. Dayot & L. Vaillat, L'Oeuvre de J.-B.-S. Chardin et de J.-H. Fragonard, Paris, 1907, no. 92, pl. 92. J. Stern, Mesdemoiselles Colombe, Paris, 1923, pp. 52, 167, 168 and 288-9. L. Reau, Fragonard, Brussels, 1956, p. 177. B. de Andia, 'Les Follies de Paris au XVIIIe siecle', M‚decine de France, no. 113, 1960, p. 23, illustrated. J. Cailleux, 'Fragonard as Painter of the Colombe Sisters', The Burlington Magazine, no. 690, supp. no. 4, September 1960, pp. 111-v, p. ii, fig. 2. G. Wildenstein, The Paintings of Fragonard, London, 1960, no. 410, fig. 169. R. Gimpel, Diary of an art dealer, New York, 1966 (French edition, 1963), p. 158. D. Wildenstein and G. Mandel, L'opera completa di Fragonard, Milan, 1972, no. 435. D. Sutton, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Fragonard, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 1980, under no. 65. J.-P. Cuzin, Fragonard, Life and Work, New York, 1988, no. 301, p. 188, pl. 228. P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Fragonard, Paris, 1989, no. 362. EXHIBITION Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Chardin-Fragonard, 1907 (ex -catalogue) Paris, Mus‚e de l'Orangerie, Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des Collections fran‡aises retrouv‚s en Allemagne par la Commission de R‚cup‚ration artistique et les Services alli‚s, 1946, no. 16, description by M. Florisoone. Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fragonard, P. Rosenberg, ed., 1987-8, no. 246. NOTES See note to previous lot.
Girl holding a dove (said to be a Portrait of Marie-Catherine Colombe) oil on canvas, circular 271/2 in. (69.8 cm.) diam. PROVENANCE (Probably) Marie-Catherine Riggieri (1751-1830), known as Mlle Colombe, chƒteau de Saint-Brice; sold with the chƒteau in 1805, to M. Revanaz, who resold the chƒteau to M. de Guy, mayor of Saint-Brice, and by descent to his son-in-law Colonel de Mondonville, thence to his widow Madame de Mondonville, by whom sold to Ren‚ Gimpel and the marquis de Biron, as of 1906. with Wildenstein & Co, from whom acquired by Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), Paris. Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (1914-99), Tel Aviv. LITERATURE P. de Nolhac, J.-H. Fragonard, 1732-1806. With a catalogue of paintings sold at auction from 1770 to 1905, by H. Pannier, Paris, 1906, illustrated between pp. 56-7. A. Dayot, 'Fragonard', L'Art et les artistes (special issue) 5, no. 27, June-July 1907, illustrated p. 151. A. Dayot and L. Vaillat, L'Oeuvre de J.-B.-S. Chardin et de J.-H. Fragonard, Paris, 1907, no. 90, fig. 90. J. Stern, Mesdemoiselles Colombe, Paris, 1923, pp. 51-2, 59 and 283, illustrated opposite p. XII. L. R‚au, Fragonard, Brussels, 1956, p. 177. B. de Andia, 'Les Follies de Paris au XVIIIe siecle', M‚decine de France, no. 113, 1960, p. 23. J. Cailleux, 'Fragonard as Painter of the Colombe Sisters', The Burlington Magazine, no. 690, supp. no. 4, September 1960, pp. 111-v, p. ii, fig. 1. G. Wildenstein, The Paintings of Fragonard, London, 1960, no. 411, fig.170. R. Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer, New York, 1966 (French edition, 1963), p. 158. D. Wildenstein and G. Mandel, L'opera completa di Fragonard, Milan, 1972, no. 436. D. Sutton, in catalogue of the exhibition, Fragonard, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 1980, under no. 65. J.-P. Cuzin, Fragonard, Life and Work, New York, 1988, p. 188, no. 302, pl. 227. P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Fragonard, Paris, 1989, no. 361. EXHIBITION Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Chardin-Fragonard, 1907 (ex-catalogue). Paris, Mus‚e de l'Orangerie, Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des Collections fran‡aises retrouv‚s en Allemagne par la Commission de R‚cup‚ration artistique et les Services alli‚s, 1946, no. 17, description by M. Florisoone Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fragonard, P. Rosenberg, ed., 1987-8, no. 245. NOTES Although no archival evidence has been uncovered to confirm the eighteenth-century provenance of Girl holding a dove and its companion piece, Girl playing with a dog and a cat, both Ren‚ Gimpel (1921; published 1963) and Georges Wildenstein (1960) offered accounts of the origin and history of the paintings. In 1906, the pair of tondos was discovered by Gimpel and the marquis de Biron still installed in the original carved panelling in the house of Mme. de Mondonville in Saint-Brice-la-Foret, a village north of Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of the forest of Montmorency. The house - the chƒteau de Saint-Brice - was a folie that had been built in the 1770s by Andr‚ Vassal (brother of the prominent connoisseur and collector of Fragonard's works, J.-A. Vassal de Saint-Hubert), as a gift for his mistress, Marie-Catherine Riggieri. She sold it in 1805, with its furnishings intact, to a 'sieur Revenaz', who subsequently resold it to M. de Guy, mayor of Saint-Brice. The mayor's son-in-law, Colonel de Mondonville, inherited the house upon his death, and it later passed to the colonel's widow, who sold the paintings to Gimpel and Biron; Baron Edouard de Rothschild acquired them shortly afterwards from Wildenstein & Co. Marie-Catherine Riggieri (1751-1830) and her two sisters, Marie-Th‚rŠse (1754-1837) and Marie-Madeleine (1760-1841), were among the more celebrated demi-mondaines of their era. Appearing under the stage name 'Colombe', the beautiful (and notorious) Venetian-born actresses of the Com‚die italienne made a sensation in late-eighteenth-century Paris (see Stern, loc. cit. ). Ever since the paintings were rediscovered a century ago still installed in the bedroom of Marie-Catherine's former residence - Girl holding a dove encased in boiserie above the fireplace, Girl playing with a dog and a cat in panelling on the wall opposite - it has been an article of faith that the pictures portray the actress and one of her sisters. Despite this - and despite Fragonard's known connections to the sisters, the fact that the artist very likely made the paintings specifically for Marie-Catherine Colombe, and the prominent role played by doves ('dove' in French is 'colombe') in the one picture - there is no reason to believe that the paintings depict any of the sisters, as Pierre Rosenberg first acknowledged (1987). Certainly, nothing about their appearance or format suggests that they were intended as portraits. The pictures follow a series of bust-length decorations of seductive young models, usually in allegorical guise, a vein that Fragonard had been working successfully throughout the 1770s: in addition to a Buste de jeune fille in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard (Cuzin, op. cit., no. 219), another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a Buste de Minerve in the Detroit Institute of Art ( ibid., no. 230), there are at least a dozen similar pictures (see ibid., nos. 218-28), most of which have been dubiously identified as depicting one or other Colombe sister in the past. The principal difference between the Rothschild tondos and the aforementioned genre paintings is the extraordinary energy, delicacy and imagination that the artist brought to the commission, a creative engagement that elevates Girl holding a dove and Girl playing with a dog and a cat far above his routine production, to the airy heights of Fragonard's greatest accomplishments. Rather than portraits, the subjects of the pictures are fictive creations that served as emblems of the joyfulness, vivacity and inviting sensuality which were hallmarks of a popular reputation that the Colombe sisters made great efforts to cultivate. The doves in Girl holding a dove were surely intended to make play on the sisters' adopted surname, just as they were meant to evoke classical associations with Venus, Goddess of Love, for whom they were traditional attributes. In the same way, the cat that scratches a frightened lapdog in the pendant painting should probably be understood as an allusion to the power that a beautiful woman holds over her male admirers. Nevertheless, it is less the allegorical elements that serve to enliven the paintings, than the remarkable virtuosity of Fragonard's paint handling and the sense of pure pleasure with which he infuses them. The warm, gilded sunlight that floods Girl holding a dove contrasts subtly with the silvery sparkle of Girl playing with a dog and a cat, and the open, creamy brushwork and inventive use of curving lines within the circular format make these pendants, as Pierre Rosenberg has observed, among 'Fragonard's most perfect and most successful works' (1987). If the paintings were, indeed, commissioned for the chƒteau de Saint-Brice, they would have to date from after 1769, when Andr‚ Vassal purchased the land on which the house would be built. The style of the pictures corresponds to a date somewhere between the mid-1770s and 1780, and Rosenberg (1987) gave further support to this dating when he published a recently discovered red chalk drawing that he places in the same period (sold Drou“t, Paris, 29 November 1985, lot 60): that drawing depicts a young girl leaning on a worktable, behind which Fragonard hastily but clearly copied Girl playing with a dog and a cat - unframed and still sitting on the floor of his studio.
