Notice de l'oeuvre :
Nicolas de Largillière, who was born in Paris in 1656, spent his childhood with his family in Antwerp. After initial training there in the studio of Antoine Gobeau, he was in London from 1675 to 1679. In the English capital he perfected his knowledge of Flemish still-life and discovered the elegant art of Van Dyck with his follower, Sir Peter Lely. After a brilliant start in London, he settled permanently in Paris in 1679, where he joined the circle of Charles Le Brun.
He then began a highly successful career as a portrait painter. He became an agréé of the Académie in 1683 and was admitted as a full member in 1686 with the Portrait of Le Brun and gradually rose through the ranks of the institution: Professor in 1705, Rector in 1722, Chancellor in 1733 and finally Director from 1738 to 1742. He received many private requests for portraits that led to official commissions, especially from the Paris town hall which asked him to paint major collective portraits (The Reception of Louis XIV at the Hotel de Ville; the Provost and Aldermen of the City of Paris Thanking God...).
Beyond his remarkable activity as a portraitist, Largillière was also a painter of History, of still-life and even of landscape. On his death, he had amassed a considerable fortune, and is today considered to be one of the greatest painters of the second part of Louis XIV’s reign. His paintings are well known, but his drawings are much less familiar. Few sheets by his hand have survived and they were already rare during his own lifetime. In his Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, Dezallier d’Argenville explains:
“His drawings are uncommon; he laid out his ideas all of a sudden on the canvas: those we conserve by him are in black chalk, highlighted with white chalk; some are in sanguine & the pen is very rarely used, except in the sketches; the fire and spirit that were given to this master, shine in all areas. His drapery studies are excellent & his hands in trois crayons are beautiful like those of Van Dyck.”6
Seven academies by his hand are known (six at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and one at the Metropolitan Museum of New York) that all date to his years as a professor at the Académie around 1705-1710 (see ill. 2 and 3). Four preparatory drawings for portraits have recently been attributed: a study of a woman for the Louvre Portrait of a Family at the Courtauld Institute in London, a Study for a Portrait of a Gentleman in black chalk acquired in 2011 by the Louvre (ill. 1), a Portrait of a Woman and her Two Children at the Musée de Grenoble. Lastly, a sheet of studies of five portraits and a drapery in red chalk highlighted with black and white chalk, formerly attributed to François de Troy has now been reattributed to him (private collection).
Two studies of hands in trois crayons join this group. The first (ill. 4), in a French private collection, prepares with some variants the Louvre Portrait of a Family (ill. 6). The second (ill. 5) is an assembly of hands repeated from portraits previously painted by the artist. The second drawing has the same purpose as the famous Hands, a painting at the Louvre (ill. 8). They are souvenirs of earlier compositions applied to a canvas or paper for the artist’s own pleasure. They constitute a reusable repertoire for future portraits.
What status should be given to our drawing: a ricordo or a study? On one side, the sheet does show the artist working with variations in the degree of finish of each hand, repetitions, corrections, changes of direction, the presence of several small quick unfinished sketches in the lower area etc. But in the lower left corner, the hands holding a helmet and a walking stick taken from the Portrait of Louis-François du Bouchet (ill. 7) created about 1710-1715. These hands appear in the same place in the Louvre jumble. Our drawing and this painting are both vertical, and we are thus tempted to link them and to consider our drawing as an initial study for the Louvre Hands (ill. 8).
As for the black chalk and stumping technique, it is similar to the academies dating to 1705-1710.
The same schematic outlines made with a multitude of small quick strokes can be seen, the same way of creating shadows using hatching following the outlines and the same proportions of the fingers with their square, almost pointed shapes. Recently discovered, this elegant “portrait of hands” brings new light to the graphic corpus, now too little known, of one of our great painters at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Ambroise Duchemin
6. Dezallier d’Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, p.203. T.IV, Paris, 1762.
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