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Premium Jean VALETTE-FALGORES, known as PENOT (Montauban, 1710 - aft…
See original version (French)
Jean VALETTE-FALGORES, known as PENOT (Montauban, 1710 - aft…
See original version (French)
Lot no. 29
Description
Jean VALETTE-FALGORES, known as PENOT (Montauban, 1710 - after 1777)
Composition with bottles of alcohol and half-peeled lemon
Oil on canvas
Unframed
Composition with bottles of alcohol and half-peeled lemon, oil on canvas, by J. Valette-Falgores called Penot
16.33 x 19.68 in.
41.5 x 50 cm
Provenance: Private collection in the South of France
The Montalban painter Jean Valette-Falgores, known as Valette-Penot, depicts a still life with bottles of spirits and an unrolled lemon in front of a wooden wall. This staging, characteristic of the painter, can also be seen in a painting recently offered for sale depicting a bowl of cherries and almonds and a bottle of syrup, or in a larger work featuring syrups and flower concoctions1. The contents of the bottles are identified by their labels. Escubac is a saffron-based liqueur. In the Traité raisonné de la distillation by M. Déjean of 1778, the preparation is described as follows: "you will put saffron in the still, with a little vanilla, a little quintessence of the four fruits with bark, a little mace, a little clove, a little angelica seed, a few coriander seeds, & a little chervi, with water & brandy; & you will distil the whole over a moderate fire, because of the complications of this recipe "2. The second bottle contains Montpellier aniseed water, the recipe for which is simpler: "put two pints of brandy & a pint of water in your still; put an ounce of fennel & two ounces of aniseed, a free & a quarter of sugar, three pints of water to make the syrup "3. The painter is therefore depicting two alcohols produced in his native Languedoc region. It is therefore highly likely that our painting was intended for an amateur from Montpellier.
1. Anonymous sale; Paris, Christie's, 24 November 2020, no. 67 and anonymous sale; New York, Christie's, 25 January 2023, no. 54 (sold for $100,800).
2. M. Déjean, Traité raisonné de la distillation, ou la distillation réduite en principes, Fourth edition, Paris, 1772, p. 264.
3. Ibid, p. 192
Jean VALETTE-FALGORES, known as PENOT (Montauban, 1710 - after 1777)
41.5 x 50 cm
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
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