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| Pierre Subleyras (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard 1699 - Rome 1749)
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| The Triumph of Harlequin and Columbine: a design for a fan
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Oil on canvas
10 ⅜ x 21 ½ in. (26.5 x 54.5 cm.)
Provenance: Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga (recorded in his inventory of 7 September 1756 (c.801v [727]) as no. 99: ‘Altro quadro di palmi due e mezzo per traverso, rappresentante una mascarata in un ventaglio, con sua cornice dorata intagliata, dipinto da Mr. Subleras scudi 35’) ; probably Lenglier (presumably the art dealer Jacques Lenglier), sale, Paris, 24 April 1786, lot 127, ‘Mon Belliard [possibly a corruption of Subleyras], ‘Une mascarade d’une composition agréable, en forme d’eventail. Cette esquisse terminée est d’une bonne couleur. Hauteur 9 pouces, largeur 18. T [toile]’ ;
M. de Castelmore, sale, Hotel de Buillon, 20 December 1791, lot 19, ‘Subleyras-un sujet de mascarade, forme d’éventail. Ce morceau, d’une composition comique, est de la touche la plus precise, et en meme temps spirituel. Haut 9 p larg. 18. T [toile]’, where purchased for 42 francs by the picture dealer, Alexandre-Joseph Paillet (1743-1814); Armand-Frederic-Ernest Nogarent, his deceased sale, Thierry, Paris, 6 April 1807, lot 37, ‘Subleyras. Mascarade, composition de vingt figures’ ; Antoine de Sauzay (1743-1821), sale, Paillet, Paris, 8 January 1810, lot 12, ‘P. Subleyras - Un tableau esquisse, forme d’eventail. Sujet d’une masquerade italienne’ ; Anon. Sale, Christie’s, London, 2 November 2001, lot 101 as ‘Attributed to Maria Felice Subleyras-Tibaldi’, where bought by Chaucer Fine Arts, London; Private Collection, U.S.A.
Exhibited: London, Chaucer Fine Arts, Artists by Artists, 2003, no. 15.
Literature: A. Haméry, La peinture italienne au musée des Augustins, Toulouse, 2003, p. 107, plate 41.B.
This spirited oil sketch by Pierre Subleyras is connected with a design for a fan by the artist’s wife, the miniaturist Maria Felice Subleyras-Tibaldi (1707-1770) (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, inv. no. 5511). It is probable that Subleyras provided the original idea, which was developed with modifications (in particular the addition of a landscape background) by his wife. Her work was then used as the basis for the design of a fan now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv.no.T153-1920), which follows the composition closely, albeit with differences in the colouring of the clothes worn by some of the figures. Mme. Subleyras’s painting, in turn, would appear to have been copied with variations by Hubert Robert in a painting formerly with Galerie Cailleux, Paris. There is also a copy of the Toulouse maquette in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.
Nothing is known of the original circumstances behind the creation of this painting, but it is first recorded in the 1756 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, who owned eight other pictures by Subleyras: no. 99, ‘quadro di palmi due e mezzo per traverso, rappresentante una mascarata in un ventaglio, con sua cornice dorata intagliata, dipinto da Mr. Subleras.’ It is not known how our painting left the Gonzaga collection, since it does not appear to be recorded in any of the Gonzaga sales. In the closing years of the eighteenth and very early years of the nineteenth century a painting, whose description corresponds very closely to this work, was recorded as changing hands several times in a number of sales held in Paris. It then disappeared from view for almost two hundred years, before finally re-emerging at auction in London in 2001.
The version by Mme. Subleyras now in Toulouse entered the museum in 1955 from the heirs of Nicolas-Joseph Marcassus, baron de Puymaurin, who had acquired it at the Toulouse Salon in 1773. In the Salon livret the work was said to have come from the estate of M. le Chavalier de Lassalle and described as ‘Esquisse d’un eventail peint en miniature pour la Reine d’Espagne par Madame Thibald de Subleiras de l’academie de Saint Luc de Rome.’ Although the Salon livret does not describe the subject of the fan, it seems highly probable that it is the maquette by Mme. Subleyras now in Toulouse. On the basis of the above description, the Toulouse work has traditionally been associated with a project for a fan for Elisabetta Farnese (1692-1766), second wife of Philip V of Spain, who was an avid collector of fans. In 1735 twelve fan designs (of which eight survive) were commissioned for Elisabetta, featuring scenes commemorating the military triumphs of her son Don Carlos (1716-1788), who was crowned King of the Two Sicilies in 1735. Given the differences in iconography, it seems impossible that the Toulouse picture formed part of this commission and it is much more likely that it was painted some four or five years later, after Maria Tibaldi’s marriage to Subleyras in 1739. It is, however, possible that Mme. Subleyras’s painting was produced for the Queen as there were connections between members of the Spanish Court and the Subleyras family: in 1739 Mme. Subleyras’s sister married the lawyer Domenico Bagnara, who was the confidant of the Spanish Ambassador to Rome, Cardinal Acquaviva, and there is a surviving letter by the latter extolling the merits of Subleyras’s new wife. Furthermore, Cardinal Valenti-Gonzaga, who owned not only Subleyras’s original sketch but also a pastel by Elisabetta Farnese (which implies a certain degree of intimacy), may also have been in a position to recommend the artist’s wife to the fan-loving Spanish Queen.
In the Colnaghi sketch, Subleyras added spandrels which transform the work into an architectural fantasy. Whereas the spandrels of the Toulouse maquette were left undecorated, here they are painted en brunaille with suggestions of panelling, and this, together with the di sotto in su perspective, might indicate that it was intended to be incorporated into a decorative scheme. While the picture is certainly too narrow to have functioned as an overdoor, it is not inconceivable that it once hung as the upper part of a boiserie panel, given the relatively narrow widths of eighteenth-century French panelling.
The narrative of Harlequin and Columbine was a popular theatrical piece, and in the present sketch the lovers are represented in a chariot before an elaborate architectural backdrop of a triumphal arch. This differs significantly from the more open and naturalistic design by Mme. Subleyras. Furthermore the theatricality of the scene is highlighted much more strongly by Subleyras. He includes members of an audience in boxes in the wings and musicians playing instruments in the orchestra pit, their scores illuminated by candlelight, all of which create the impression that we are attending a performance in an eighteenth-century theatre. By contrast, the fan design by Mme. Subleyras presents a less crowded and statelier triumphal procession taking place in an open air setting. The stage has been replaced by a terrace and the orchestra pit by a flight of steps guarded by stone lions and flanked by fountains. There are also significant differences in execution. Subleyras’s sketch is executed briskly with the artist’s characteristic bravura brushwork, whereas the Toulouse canvas is much more carefully executed in a meticulous technique which reveals the hand of a miniaturist. Although Subleyras’s design is more sophisticated in terms of its handling of space and lighting, the Toulouse maquette has greater clarity and works better as a design for a fan.
The inspiration behind this charming design comes ultimately from Watteau, who is known to have provided at least one design for a fan: a commedia dell’arte subject featuring Pierrot and Columbine, which was engraved by Boucher. Here, though, the figure of Harlequin is derived directly from another Watteau design engraved by Cochin (Pour garder l’honneur d’une belle), while the triumphal chariot on which the lovers ride comes from an engraving by J.B. Pierre, Mascarade chinoise (1735), where the figure of the Emperor of China was modelled on that of Subleyras himself. Pierre was responsible for engraving the series of illustrations by Subleyras to the Contes of La Fontaine, which were published around the same time, and, as Méjanes has shown, the Pierre engraving of the Mascarade chinoise records an actual event in which both Pierre and Subleyras were involved: a Chinese masquerade staged by the pensionnaires of the French Academy in Rome in 1735.
The final stage in the complex evolution of The Triumph of Harlequin and Columbine was when Hubert Robert produced his version of the subject. His painting, originally thought to be by Watteau but published as Robert by Marianne Roland-Michel, was probably painted by the young artist between his arrival in Rome in 1754 and his return to France in 1765. This painting clearly takes its cue from Mme. Subleyras’s design rather than the oil sketch of her husband, borrowing, for example, the open landscape background and the motif of the parasol above the chariot, which is not present in the Colnaghi-Bernheimer painting. In translating what was originally a fan design into an easel painting, Robert painted the trees in the background more loosely and filled up the ‘hole’ in the foreground by moving the dog, who in the maquette is shown drinking from the basin of one of the fountains, to the centre of the composition. Thus an original idea by Subleyras, drawing inspiration from Watteau and a Chinese pageant in the Rome Carnival, provided the source both for a celebrated fan painted for the Queen of Spain and one of Hubert Robert’s most capricious early oil paintings.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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