CARLE VANLOO NICE, 1705 - 1765, PARIS

Homage to Love, 1760 Oil on canvas 137.2 x 97.4 cm BIBLIOGRAPHY M.-F. Dandré-Bardon, Vie de Carle Vanloo, Paris, Desaint, 1765, in-12, 69 p.; S. Ernst, "Notes sur des tableaux français de l'Ermitage", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1935, t. LXVIII, June-December, p. 142, n°6; M.-C. Sahut, Carle Vanloo. Premier peintre du roi (Nice, 1705 - Paris, 1765), cat. exp. Nice, Musée Chéret, 1977, n°247, p. 98; Les Van Loo, fils d'Abraham, exhibition, Musée des beaux-arts, Nice, 1 November 2000-28 February 2001, cat. exp. by J.-F. Mozziconacci, C. Astro, A. Zanella, et al., 2000; C. Henry, "La Grâce comme système poético-politique", La Grâce, les grâces, Littératures classiques, n° 60, 2006; Autour des Van Loo: peinture, commerce des tissus et espionnage en Europe (1250-1830), C. Rolland (dir.), Rouen, PUR, 2012; C. Henry, "Loo, Carle van", Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon (AKL), vol. 85 [2015], 2015, p. 251; C. Henry, "Carle Vanloo (1705-1765)", Recueil des Commémorations nationales, année 2015, ed. France Archives, online: Conférences de l'Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, J. Lichtenstein and C. Michel (eds.), Beaux-Arts de Paris editions, 2015, t. VI, vol. 2, p. 897. This painting by Charles-André Vanloo, known as Carle Vanloo (Nice, 1705 - Paris, 1765) is a notable rediscovery for the last years of a painter who remains one of the most representative ar t ist ic personalities of the monarchic cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. Born into a family of Dutch painters whose members enjoyed a European fortune, Carle Vanloo was trained in the Parisian studio of his brother Jean-Baptiste. In 1724, he won the first prize in painting at the Royal Academy, and from 1728 onwards he was pensioned at the French Academy in Rome, where he fulfilled prestigious Roman commissions before joining the court of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia in Turin. In 1733 he married the court musician Christina Somis, whose father, Maestro Jean-Baptiste Somis, was a close associate of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy. The prelude to one of the most remarkable artistic careers of the 18th century, Carle Vanloo's Italian sojourn, with its exceptional achievements in the palaces of Stupinigi and Palazzo Reale in Turin, brought him the immediate support of the Mercure de France when his works were presented at the 1735 Salon. Until 1747, the praise for his mastery of all parts of painting, his subtle art of referring to the great masters and his iconographic range covering the whole typology of genres, will not dry up. The dreaded critic Lafont de Saint-Yenne admired him and recognised him as a master of the "grande manière", which was confirmed by his appointment as director of the Royal School of Protected Pupils (1748) and the lasting esteem of enlightened critics (Cochin, Grimm, the Count of Caylus and Diderot). He was a key figure in the biennial Salon for the abundance of his deliveries as much as for the critical scandals they provoked (Sacrifice of Iphigenia, 1757 & Portrait of Mademoiselle Clairon as Medea, 1759, both in Potsdam, Neues Schloss; Madeleine pénitente, 1761, coll. part.) he was pampered by Louis XV who granted him the functions of first painter to the king in 1762 and director of the Académie in 1763. Our painting should be compared with a famous composition by the artist, dated 1760 by his biographer Michel-François Dandré-Bardon and engraved in 1772 by Jean-Baptiste de Lorraine under the title "Hommage à l'Amour" (etching, 1772, Paris, BnF, fig.) when it adorned the famous collection of Jean de Julienne. Later acquired by Catherine II through Prince Galitzin, it was exhibited at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, where it was catalogued in 1774, then at the Hermitage until 1917. Mentioned as lost in 1977 by Marie-Catherine Sahut (II. Tableaux perdus, n°247), it has recently been linked to a version kept in the National Gallery of Armenia in Yerevan (cf. Conférences [...], 2015, t. VI, vol. 2, p. 897), but the style of this one does not seem to correspond to that of Carle Vanloo and its dimensions are moreover 20 centimetres larger than those of the lost Hermitage painting, in height as well as in width. In contrast, our painting has similar dimensions and composition (cf. Ernst, 1935, p. 98) to that of the lost painting and its autograph character can hardly be questioned. The print reproduces the exact composition and all the meticulously painted motifs in reverse, without omitting to depict the variety of plants or the stiffness of Love's back. This distinctive character of Carle Vanloo's manner is particularly characteristic of one of the young women in the composition of The Three Graces of 1765, for which Galitzin will again serve as intermediary. Read more in the e-catalogue

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