Lot 59: Jean-Michel Picart (Antwerp 1600-1682 Paris)

Carnations, irises and blossom in a sculpted vase on a stone ledge
oil on canvas
19 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. (50.2 x 37.5 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 11 December 1985, lot 80, as Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, where acquired by
Citibank; sale, Christie's, New York, 11 January 1989, lot 159, as Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (where acquired by the following)
Anonymous sale [The Property of a Private Collector]; Sotheby's, New York, 28 January 2000, lot 139, where acquired by the present owner.

We are grateful to Mr. Fabrice Faré for confirming the attribution to Jean-Michel Picart on the basis of a photograph.

Picart was a Flemish artist who moved to Paris before 1635 where he set up in Saint Germain-des-Près as a painter and dealer. Although Flemish-trained, he tailored his style to the French market where taste increasingly tended towards the decorative and Italianate as the 17th century progressed. In this he was spectacularly successful, competing for commissions with Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. Picart soon enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu as well as King Louis XV: at least sixteen of his pictures are listed in royal inventories, including seven at Versailles. Félibien's seminal treatise Entretiens sur les vie et les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes of 1666, praises Picart as one of the greatest of all artists. He is even mentioned in the poetry of Tristan L'Hermite, himself a collector of floral still lifes, who wrote in 1648:
Within these immortal pages Unfamiliar flowers bloom Now we see just how Picart Has exploited all his art... Foliage appears in motion, Of scent and sound we gain the notion With their exquisite appeal Our five sense they can steal. (A. Mérot, French Painting in the Seventeenth Century, English edition, transl. Caroline Benmish, 1995, p. 244, quoting Tristan L'Hermite, Les Vers hérriques, Paris 1648).

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.