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Joseph-Benoît SUVÉE (Bruges, 1743 – 1807, Rome)
The Nativity…
See original version (French)
57
-
Joseph-Benoît SUVÉE (Bruges, 1743 – 1807, Rome)
The Nativity…
See original version (French)
Estimate €2,000 - €3,000
Voluntary lot
Description
Joseph-Benoît SUVÉE (Bruges, 1743 – 1807, Rome)
The Nativity
Original canvas
30.4 x 16.5 cm – 12 x 6 1/2 in.
Bears an inscription on the stretcher reading ‘Suvée’.
The Nativity, canvas
We would like to thank Anne Leclair and Sophie Join-Lambert for confirming the attribution of this painting to Joseph-Benoît Suvée, via digital photograph and email in June 2026.
Provenance:
Collection of Baudouin van de Walle (1901–1988), Belgian archaeologist.
Related work(s):
The Nativity, 75.5 x 46.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts (inv. 12129), exhibited at the 1785 Salon (no. 24)
Description:
In 1785, the Marquise de Noailles commissioned Joseph-Benoît Suvée to paint a Nativity[1] for the chapel of her private mansion on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. Seized during the Revolution and subsequently sold, the work has since disappeared. A smaller-scale replica (Fig. 1), executed later around 1791 and acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in 2002 from the Jacques Leegenhoek gallery in Paris, has revealed the composition of the lost work.
Our previously unpublished sketch thus joins the two preparatory studies currently known for this Nativity[2]. When the commissioned work was presented at the 1785 Salon, the *Mercure de France* reported: ‘The Nativity is one of the finest works produced by Mr Suvée’s brush. The composition is far more skilful, the arrangement judicious and noble, the drawing pure, the colouring delicate. The light is well distributed, and the character of the figures is truly beautiful’[3].
Born in Bruges, Suvée was a Flemish painter who entered the studio of Matthijs De Visch (1701–1765) at the age of eight. At the age of twenty, he set off for Paris in the company of fellow students from the Academy in his hometown. Having become a pupil of Jean-Jacques Bachelier, he won the Grand Prix in 1771 and immediately set off for Rome, where he settled for six years. Elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1780, he returned to Rome in 1801, having been appointed director of the French Academy in Rome on the strength of his career’s successes. An excellent teacher and renowned educator, he was the figure who introduced Neoclassicism to what was then known as ‘Belgium’.
[1] Sophie Join-Lambert, Anne Leclair, Joseph Benoît Suvée (1743–1807). An artist between Bruges, Rome and Paris, Paris, Arthéna, 2017, p. 239, p. 129.
[2] Ibid., pp. 130–131.
[3] *Mercure de France*: dedicated to the King, Paris, G. Cavelier, October 1785, no. 40, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p. 25 [Available online].
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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