Jean-Baptiste Pillement
A pair of pastoral scenes
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Jean Baptiste Pillement
Lyon 1728–1808
A pair of pastoral scenes
both signed in black chalk, lower left: Pillement;
both bear inscriptions on the backing boards: THE PROPERTY OF CELESTE CINATTI BATALHA REIS / c/o SUTHERLAND HOTEL, / SOUTHAMPTON. / OR PORTUGUESE CONSULATE. / OR "CROFTON" TWYFORD, HANTS. / OR c/o MARTIN V ROBERTS ESQ., / BOWERS FARM, / PLAITFORD, HANTS)
both pastel on paper laid down on canvas
both 533 by 843 mm
(2)
Acquired in the 1830s or 1840s by Jose Giuseppe Cinatti (1808-1879) for his wife, Maria Anastasia Rivolta Cinatti, Lisbon,
thence by descent to their daughter, Celeste Cinatti Batalha Reis (1848-1900) and her husband Jayme Batalha Reis (1847-1935), Lisbon and London,
thence by descent
N. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, nos. 1.592.647 and 1.592.648
Pillement's fascinating, peripatetic career saw him work not only in his native Lyon and in Paris, but also in Madrid, Lisbon, London, Vienna, Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, Milan, Rome, Venice, Basel and Cadiz. The fact that these grand pastels were already in a Portuguese collection not long after Pillement's death raises the possibility that they may have been executed during the artist's stay in Lisbon, between 1750 and 1754, and have remained there until they were brought to England in the late 19th century.
Part of Pillement's fame rests on his distinctive Chinoiseries, but he also developed a very personal style of pastoral landscape composision, influenced both by the art of 17th-century Dutch painters such as Nicolaes Berchem and by fellow-countrymen such as Boucher, and he specialised in representing these subjects, as here, in the form of large-scale pastels. These pastels had no close parallels in the work of Pillement's contemporaries, and were in great demand throughout Europe.
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