Lot 114: **** Portien , active France circa 1738 - 1752 "The Dance" and "Blind Man's Bluff" after Jean-Baptiste Pater a pair, both oil on canvas

one signed and dated lower left Portien pinxit, 1738 a pair, both oil on canvas Quantity: 2

measurements note each: 29 by 24 in.; 73.7 by 61 cm.

With Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (according to an old label on the reverse);
With Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York (according to an old label on the reverse).

PROPERTY FROM A FAMILY ESTATE
The present pair of paintings by Portien are replicas of two compositions by Jean-Baptiste Pater, The Dance and Blind Man's Bluff, now in the Wallace Collection, London (P397 and P400). Those two paintings, along with A Concert and The Swing, also both in the Wallace Collection (P383 and P397), originally formed a set of four paintings, which was sent to the collection of the Président de Ségur in 1739. In that same year, Filleoul made engravings of these compositions titled, The Little Pleasures of Youth, each of which was accompanied by a poem by Charles Moraine illuminating the amourous content of the picture.

The present pair, one of which is signed and dated 1738, were painted before the original set went to the Président de Ségur and before Filleoul made his engravings, which suggests that Portien painted these works from Pater's original.

Although very little is known about Portien, documents show that he was agrée (approved) at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris as a painter of fêtes galantes, and that in January of 1748, for the apartment of the duchesse de Villars at Versailles, he painted a portrait of Queen Marie Leszcynska, as a "religious penitent."