Page 80 - Pierre Durand Collection Including Chinese Art and Porcelain Sothebys Jan 27 2022

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FRANÇOIS LE MOYNE (PARIS 1686-1737) Between his acceptance by the Académie in 1718, meeting François Berger,
Study of a nude horseman seen from behind, his right arm raised, who would become his main patron, in 1721, and leaving for Italy in 1723,
with a study of another man Lemoyne worked on a large and ambitious painting, signed and dated
1722, now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie in Besançon (inv.
black chalk heightened with white, on light brown paper
14¡ x 8¿ in. (37 x 20.5 cm) 850.21.1; see J.L. Bordeaux, François Lemoyne and his Generation 1688-1737,
Paris, 1984, no. 33, fig. 29). Based on Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata
$30,000-40,000 (canto III, verses 21-25), Lemoyne’s composition depicts the battle in which
the Christian hero Tancred recognizes in his adversary the beautiful Saracen
PROVENANCE:
Jean-Denis Lempereur (1701-1799), Paris (L. 1740); Paris, 19 October 1775, woman Clorinda and falls in love with her. The present drawing is a nude
possibly part of lots 93, 94, 95, 780, 787 or 794. study for the horseman seen from behind, emerging from the background
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 12 January 1995, lot 89. next to Tancred’s standard-bearer to the left side of the composition.
Focusing on the man’s well-defined body, stretched-out to the entire page
LITERATURE:
N. Strasser, Dessins français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Collection Jean Bonna, in a pose of tension, stressed by the white chalk heightening, Lemoyne
Geneva, 2016, p. 92, under no. 37. barely indicates the man’s lance, helmet, and his mount, which he keeps
E. Brugerolles, Suite française. Dessins de la collection Jean Bonna, exhib. cat., under control with invisible reins held in his left hand. The figure appears
Paris, École supérieure nationale des Beaux-Arts, 2007, p. 134, under no. 25. fully clothed in the painting, and the drawing attests to the carefulness of
Lemoyne’s preparatory process, documented by many other figure studies
of this type dating from various periods of his short career (he committed
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