Jacques-André Portail

John Mortimer Schiff,

his sale, London, Christie's, 24 June 1938, lot 47;

with Galerie Cailleux, Paris;

Private collection, Paris;

sale, Paris, Christie's, 10 April 2013, lot 55,

where acquired by the present owner

X. Salmon, Jacques-André Portail, 1695-1759, Cahiers du dessin Français, Paris, 1996, no. 16, illustrated

Paris, Galerie Cailleux, Le dessin français de Watteau à Prud'hon, 1951, cat. 105;

Paris, Galerie Cailleux, Watteau et sa génération, 1968, cat. 121

Portail began his career as an architect, in his native Brittany, and only came to Paris in middle age, to take up a post as superintendant of the King's pictures, at Versailles. His career, particularly from the point of his arrival in Paris, circa 1740, is well documented in Xavier Salmon’s 1996 publication on the artist, from which it becomes clear that despite his lack of a formal Academy training, the elegance and technical skill achieved in his drawings made Portail’s work eminently fashionable among contemporary collectors and members of the French court alike.¹ His precise manner of combining red and black chalk to produce an almost porcelain-like finish is highly distinctive, and in a very few outstanding works, of which this is one, he combines this technique with delicately applied watercolour. Comparable works include the Young Woman with a Song Book, in the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and the Young Woman Drawing at a Table, in the Morgan Museum and Library, New York.²

^1.Salmon, op. cit., pp. 5-11

^2.Salmon, op. cit., cats 12 and 18