Pierre Patel the Elder

Manon, Countess of Lovelace (d.1990);
Sold by her Executors, London, Christie's, 23 April 1993, lot 34, when acquired by the late owner.

L'Estampille - L'Objet d'Art, March 1993, p. 30, reproduced;
N. Coural, Les Patel. Paysagistes du XVIIe siècle, Paris 2001, pp. 138-39, cat. no. PP9, reproduced.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a firm lining that has preserved the texture well. It was not possible to see the back, but there has never been any accidental damage and presumably only a single lining. The stretcher is certainly stronger than the original narrow stretcher bars just visible in the craquelure at the top and base edges. The painting's undoubtedly careful background with minimal past intervention has preserved the surface in virtually immaculate condition. There is no trace of wear, and scarcely any retouching, just one or two little lines near the lower skyline to mute an occasional hairline crack, some tiny older touches by the trees nearby apparently over a pentiment, one insignificant retouching in the darker column at centre left with two below in its base, and a few minor touches at the base edge. The rump of the grey horse also has a little strengthening in the surrounding shadows. The extraordinarily perfect preservation of the texture of the brushwork, of every detail in the foliage and the water weeds, the crisp fluting of the columns and slender climbing tendrils against the stone, and the full luminosity of the sunset and water, all prove to have been a rare combination of fine original technique and a stable unintrusive background. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This idyllic classical landscape is one of Patel's greatest works. A few travellers walk or pause for rest in the shadow of the columns of a decayed classical temple. Just as the sun's last rays bathe the marshy landscape and its ancient ruins in a warm golden light, a single shot from a huntsman at the edge of the reeds rings out across the water. There is no breath of wind, and nothing can disturb the sense of utter stillness and tranquillity which permeates the scene, where all the colours and forms are rendered with an almost crystalline clarity.

Natalie Coural dates this landscape to around 1640, and describes it as 'l'un des chefs-d'oeuvre de Pierre Patel' ('one of Patel's masterpieces'). It is without doubt the most important work from the first decade of Patel's career.  In terms of style, Coural compares the Rau landscape to another Landscape with classical ruins now in Valence, Musée des Beaux-Arts,¹ which she considers of a similar date, but suggests that the cool clear colours of the present work, together with its greater realism, would indicate that it was the earlier of the two pictures.  By this date Patel had been in Paris barely six years, having been received into the Guild of St. Germain-des-Prés in 1633-34 and the Académie de Saint-Luc a year later. There is no evidence that Patel ever went to Italy, and though he may have known of the work of Claude Lorrain in Rome, his style at this date was more likely to have been influenced by the example of the latter's Dutch follower Herman van Swanevelt, who had returned from Italy to settle in Paris in the 1630s. Patel's clearer and more refined classicism is, however, typical of French landscape painting of the period, as practised for example by his contemporaries in Paris, Henri Mauperché or Laurent de la Hyre. In this early painting he has already begun to develop his distinct semi-arcadian vocabulary of marshland, classical ruins and delicate trees. The painting illustrates superbly the bright palette and sharpness of both technique and tone that mark his earlier paintings, as distinct from the more complex design or deeper colour that characterise his later work.²  Patel's talents were clearly recognised by his contemporaries, for he worked together with Simon Vouet in the 1630s, between 1646-47 with Eustache le Sueur at the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, and between 1668 and 1676 the accounts of the Bâtiments du Roi also record a series of views of the Royal Palaces.³  The Abbé Fontenay praised his 'coloris vigoreux'⁴, while Pierre-Jean Mariette went as far as to describe him as 'the Claude Lorrain of France', favourably comparing his 'fraicheur' and the surety of his touch.⁵  Although Patel undoubtedly worked in the long shadow cast by his distant and more famous compatriot in Rome, he was not a mere slavish imitator of Claude, and his best work retains a degree of independence and a poetic quality that was unmatched by any of his contemporaries in France itself. 

 

 

1. Inv. no. P. 578; see N. Coural, under Literature, p. 141, no. 12, reproduced.
2. For an outstanding example of this later period, see, for example, the work of the 1660s sold in these Rooms, 10 July 2003, lot 53 (£220,000).
3. Of these only that of 1668 of the Palace at Versailles survives, where it remains in situ.
4. Dictionnaire des artistes, Paris 1776, vol. II, p. 269.
5. Abecedario, 1750-54, Paris 1857-58, vol. IV, pp.88-89.