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A selection by: Asta Enchères - Maison de ventes aux enchères Corse-Paris

Joseph-Marie VIEN (Montpellier 1716-1809 Paris) The toilette…
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Lot no. 103
Estimate: €6,000 - €8,000
Sale date : 11/22/2025 at 2:00 PM
Sale commission
Old paintings Drawings, watercolours & pastels
Description
Joseph-Marie VIEN (Montpellier 1716-1809 Paris) The toilette of a young bride in antique costume circa 1776-1777. Oil on paper, mounted on canvas. 29.5 x 39.5 cm (enlarged by 1 cm on the left margin) Provenance : - Anonymous sale, Étude Christian Rosset, Geneva, 28-29 November 1973, lot 275, as "Vien Joseph (att. to)" (illustrated in the catalogue). - Collection of Dr Paolini, Corsica. - Then, by descent, until today. Bibliography : - Most likely Archives nationales, O/1/1942 , "- Vien, Directeur. 1775-1781", "Letter from Vien to d'Angiviller, 11 September 1776". - Very probably A. de Montaiglon, J. Guiffrey, "Correspondance des directeurs de l'Académie de France à Rome...", t.13, p.246. n°6789. - Most probably T. Gaehtgens, J. Lugand, "Joseph-Marie Vien, peintre du roi", Arthena, 1988, n°239 - T. Gaehtgens, J. Lugand, "Joseph-Marie Vien, peintre du roi", Arthena, 1988, n°240. Related works : - Joseph-Marie Vien, La toilette de la jeune mariée, 1777, oil on canvas, 100 x 135 cm. sale Sotheby's New York, 1 February 2018, lot 51, sold for $855,000. Our delicate oil-on-paper sketch is almost certainly the preparatory sketch, long thought lost, for one of the artist's masterpieces, "La toilette d'une jeune mariée dans le costume antique" ("The toilette of a young bride in antique costume"), painted in Rome in 1777 and commissioned directly by Charles Claude Flahaut de La Billarderie, comte d'Angiviller (1730-1809), a fine collector and superintendent of the Bâtiments du Roi (private collection, current location unknown as of 2018). In the painter's correspondence with d'Angiviller, there is mention of a sketch in progress: "Rome, 11 September 1776, (...) I have been busy sketching the painting you asked me to do, representing a young Greek woman being prepared for marriage, and I have not forgotten the rosebud she is to hold in her hand to compare it with another; I will leave no stone unturned so that it may please you (...)". In their 1988 catalogue raisonné, Messrs Gaehtgens and Lugand established that our sketch, which they knew only from the mediocre photograph in the 1973 sale catalogue, could well be the sketch mentioned in the 1776 letter. It was also envisaged that it might be a "replica executed by the artist before the painting was sent to Paris, or better still only a copy". Vien was accustomed to working in oils on paper in preparation for these large compositions, which are generally executed in a direct and nervous manner, with a fairly broad brush. Ours seems to reflect the artist's particular attention to detail, another example of which is his "Priam begging Achilles to return Hector's body" (c. 1783, 52 x 67 cm, cat. Gaehtgens & Lugand, no. 249, former collection of Karl Lagerfeld). A previous auction of the final painting in 1777 set a world record for the artist in 2018 (see related work). Expert: Pierre-Antoine MARTENET.
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