Nicolas Lancret

Collection of Madame Marinoni, 1912 (according to Wildenstein);
Anonymous sale (‘Appartenant à Madame D...’), Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 22–23 May 1924, lot 64, for 27,000 French francs;
With Wildenstein, New York, 1926;
Mary Clarke Thompson, New York, 1947;
Margaret Dunlap Behn;
By whose Estate sold New York, Christie’s, 15 June 1977, lot 59;
Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Gentleman’), London, Sotheby’s, 1 November 1978, lot 26, for £90,000;
With Partridge Fine Art, London.

G. Wildenstein, Lancret, Paris 1924, p. 84, no. 199;
International Studio, April 1926, p. 37, reproduced.

The canvas has a fairly old 20th century relining which is still stable and sound. Though fairly well-preserved in parts, the paint surface has been compromised by wear and later restoration in others. For example, the figures behind the picnic table and the foliage above are beautifully preserved, but the lady to the right and the two central figures of the piper and the dancing girl have suffered from restoration to the heads. There has been a good deal of later restoration to details of the landscape and background, notably behind the figures at the table and tot the sky and landscape beyond the male dancer on the left. The foreground beneath the two dancing figures and the two dogs have been substantially repainted. The delicacy of Lancret's brushwork and colouring, however, is still in evidence in the majority of the painting.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Lancret – like Watteau – made his reputation with his many genre pictures of gallant scenes. The familiar characters of the fête galante – musicians and amorous couples in outdoor settings – populate his canvases. Appreciated for their sophistication and the inventiveness of their narrative themes, Lancret’s pictures were sought after by the major art patrons of his time, numbering among them the most eminent rulers of foreign courts, as well as his own king. Under Louis XV’s enthusiastic patronage, Lancret’s paintings adorned the walls of numerous royal residences including Versailles.  

Fête champêtre with a dancing couple is a rediscovered work by Lancret, first published by Wildenstein but unillustrated and unseen since its sale at auction in the late 1970s. Mary Tavener Holmes considers it to be an autograph work by the artist, and has proposed a dating to the first half of the 1720s. We are grateful to her for endorsing the attribution to Lancret on the basis of a photograph. She has also suggested, given the tilt of the composition, that Fête champêtre with a dancing couple may originally have been an overdoor. The choice of format and the picture’s impressive figures, which dominate the lower half of the composition, would certainly support that idea.

Fête champêtre with a dancing couple relates to two other works by Lancret that also feature the striking figure of the dancing man seen from behind; all three compositions have the male dancer poised in the same dance step. Of the two comparable pictures, one is at the palace of Sanssouci, Potsdam, The outdoor dance;¹ the other, The pastoral dance, is at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.² Both were in the collection of Frederick II of Prussia – a devotee of French eighteenth-century art and particularly keen on Watteau and his contemporaries. Mary Tavener Holmes has also noted that the seated bagpipe player appears in another work in the collection of Frederick II, Fête galante with figures dancing a reel by a statue of Bacchus, at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin.³ Holmes’ dating would place the Fête champêtre with a dancing couple as the first of the pictures to include the balletic male dancer described above and close in date to Frederic II’s Fête galante at Charlottenburg, a picture of comparable scale and format.

A beautiful drawing in the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor served as a preparatory study in black and white chalk for the figure of the dancing man (fig. 1).⁴ Lancret lavished particular attention on details of the dancer’s costume, all meticulously rendered and faithfully translated into paint. The precise position of the cocked little finger of the right hand is closely scrutinised in the drawing and carefully delineated in the painting. It may be that he is holding castanets.⁵ First studied in monochrome, the costume’s silk folds and flamboyant vertical slashes are rendered even more striking in the final painting, with Lancret’s introduction of glimpses of pink fabric along the dancer’s back and thighs that harmonise with the rest of the picture, in particular his partner’s dress. The shimmering highlights of the costumes are characteristic of Lancret’s fluid brushstrokes.

Lancret’s ability to paint dancers poised mid-step is seen here to striking effect. The prominent dancing couple in this work, would, during the course of the decade and the beginning of the 1730s, evolve into Lancret’s portraits of famous ballerinas in outdoor settings. His pictures of Mademoiselle Camargo dancing, for example, which exist in numerous versions, testify to Lancret’s ongoing devotion to dance as the subject matter of his narrative scenes. Georges Wildenstein in his monograph on the artist included just over 70 pictures of outdoor dances. 

¹ See M.T. Holmes in C. M. Vogtherr et al., Französische Gemälde I: Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoüe, Berlin 2011, cat. no. 65, pp. 567–72. Inv. GK I 5635: Fête galante mit landlichen Menuett, 76 x 106 cm.

² See M. T. Holmes in Vogtherr et al. 2011, cat. no. A16, pp. 680–82. Inv. 2583: Fête galante mit Hirten, 54 x 69 cm.

³ See M. T. Holmes in Vogtherr et al. 2011, cat. no. 56, pp. 503 ff., reproduced p. 505. Inv. GK I 4188: Das Moulinet, 129 x 95 cm.

⁴ Waddesdon Manor, inv. 1037.

⁵ J. Carey in London, Wallace Collection and Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, Theatres of Life: Drawings from the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, 8 November 2007 – 27 January 2008 and 12 April – 1 June 2008, no. 60.