Alexandre-François Desportes

Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Swiss Collector"), London, Sotheby's, 8 July 1987, lot 86;
There purchased by Bernard Palitz. 

P. Jacky, François Desportes (1661-1743), Monographie et Catalogue Raisonné, Paris 1999, vol. IV, p. 651;
G. de Lastic and P. Jacky, Desportes. Catalogue Raisonné, Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau 2010, p. 145, cat. no. P 559, reproduced in color. 

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work has been restored and could easily be hung in its current condition. The condition of the work is fantastic. The canvas seems to have not been lined. It is beautifully stretched with no weakness or unsightly cracking. The paint layer is clean and shows no real retouches at all, except possibly a spot or two above the green duck's head on the right side. The work is in spectacular condition.
"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."

Desportes was the first great French painter to specialize in animal and hunting subjects, and together with his successor Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) became the most important and influential exponent of the genre in his day. His realistic and carefully observed style owes more to the Flemish traditon in which he trained than to the lighter rococo style favored by Oudry, and the realism of his art is recorded to have greatly impressed Louis XIV. Desportes was an exact observer and made a large number of studies of animals, birds and flowers from the life. Around 1700 or shortly afterwards, he began to paint trophies of the hunt and dead game arranged with fruit and flowers and vegetables on tables or in landscape settings, of which this painting is a fine example. The combination of peaches and plums, arranged in baskets or, as here, in porcelain bowls, was evidently a favorite motif, for they recur in many of his works in this vein.   The handling of the mallard and the arrangement of the fruit in a porcelain bowl can, for example, be compared to Desportes' Still Life of Plums in a blue and white porcelain bowl together with peaches, a partridge and a woodcock and hanging mallard, sold Sotheby's London, 8 December 2010, lot 41. In works such as this, with their combination of Flemish realism and brilliant colors and French classical principles, Desportes was to provide an immensely influential transition from the late Baroque to the Rococo.

As a young man Desportes first studied in  Paris from 1674-78 with the ageing Flemish animalier Nicasius Bernaerts. In 1699 he was réçu into the Académie Royale as an animal painter, and received his first commission from Louis XIV the following year, the beginning of a period of royal patronage which was to last nearly fifty years. Appointed painter to the Royal Hunt, he continued to work for Louis XV, and among his many commissions he worked for the royal châteaux at Anet, Choisy, and Compiègne, for the Duchesse de Berry's hunting lodge at the Château de la Muette in the Bois-de-Boulogne and for Louis-Henri, Duc de Bourbon, at Chantilly. In 1704 he was made Conseiller at the Academie and exhibited frequently at the Paris Salon until 1742.

A preparatory drawing for this picture is in the Musée de the Chasse, Gien.