Jean-Baptiste Pillement

Probably David Garrick, Fuller House, Hampton, England;
With Galerie Gildas Guédel, Paris.

M. Gordon-Smith, 'The influence of Jean Pillement on French and English Decorative Art', in Artibus et Historiae, n. 41;
M. Gordon-Smith, Pillement, Cracow 2006, pp. 54-55, reproduced in color, fig. 36.

The painting over all is in a very healthy condition for a work of these dimensions. The canvas is lined and stable. The paint surface is secure with generalised areas of retouching in the lower section, some of which visible with the naked eye possibly to address old tears in the canvas. The upper section remains relatively untouched. There is scattered retouching to the architecture and to the face and costume of the standing figure in the boat and a repaired tear of approximately six inches running vertically from the bottom of the vessel. There is a thin line of retouching along the left hand edge consistent with old frame abrasion. The floral framing motif is in very good condition. Offered in an elaborately carved gilt wood frame.
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This elegant large scale chinoiserie was probably commissioned by David Garrick, the celebrated Shakesperean actor and patron of the arts. It adorned the living room of 'Fuller House', Garrick's residence in Hampton, near London, which he purchased in 1755.¹  Upon his acquisition of the house, Garrick hired Robert Adam to remodel it, and Lancelot Brown to design the gardens. Much of the decoration and furniture were provided by the leading makers of the day, including Thomas Chippendale, and as is clear in the present example, Jean-Baptiste Pillement. Garrick met Pillement through Charles Leviez, another well-known actor working in England. Pillement was introduced to Leviez in 1757, who became a strong supporter of Pillement's English commissions. Garrick was clearly taken with Pillement's work, as he paid the the artist £150 on 16 July 1757 to decorate his Grande Salle (drawing room), la petite chamber a Paysage (the small landscape room), and the Camayeux du grand Escuallier (the paintings en camaïeu of the great staircase).² 

In addition to the present canvas, Pillement executed five further chinoiserie wall panels of varying sizes which probably formed part of that substantial decorative scheme (each in private French collections, see Literature, M. Gordon Smith 2006, p.55). The set constitutes Pillement's only known major commission from 1745-1760, a period during which time he visited Spain, Portugal, and England. Original records which indicate the wall measurments in the drawing room of Fuller House closely match those of the different canvases, which lends to the strong argument that they were all conceived to hang together in that room of the house. Furthmore, all of the canvases show similar markings around their edges which suggests that they once hung on a wall. Perhaps, as Gordon-Smith has suggested, these are traces of the early papier mâché borders mentioned in the inventory of Fuller House.³ In addition, evidence which further supports this argument is the existence of P.C. Canot's engravings of Pillement's Livre de Chinois, published in 1758, which feature four of the panels from this series. The additional two panels are featured in Pillement's designs for Allégories des Douze Mois de l'Année, 1759, and Scènes Chinoises, also from 1759.

1. M. Gordon Smith 2006, op.cit. p. 54.
2. L. Galbraith, "Garrick's Furniture at Hampton", in Apollo , vol. XCVI, July 1972, pp. 46-55.
3. M. Gordon Smith 2006, op.cit. p. 55.