Lot 159: s - Simon Michel Liègeois c. 1695-1775 Paris , The Duquesnoy relief oil on canvas, unframed, en grisaille

signed and dated lower right: SML (in compendium) iegeois. 1748: oil on canvas, unframed, en grisaille

37.5 by 55 cm.

Possibly Paris, Exposition de l'Académie de Saint-Luc, Paris, 1751, no. 95 (un petit tableau, représentant un bas-relief, d'aprè François Flamand).

Sale, Monte Carlo, Sotheby's, 2 December 1994, lot 22, where acquired.

The subject of this picture, a popular one for trompe l'oeil painters, and included in paintings by a broader range of artists such as Desportes, Watteau and Chardin, is François Duquesnoy's celebrated bronze relief. We know little of the long-lived artist Simon Michel, who was presumably of Liègois origins. He became a member of the Academie de Saint-Luc in Paris on 23rd August 1720, and he exhibited there until 1774.