CHARLES DE LA FOSSE | Saint Paul on the road to Damascus

Acquis à Bordeaux, commerce d'art, 1976

Rennes, 2012, n°47 (notice par Clémentine Gustin Gomez) ;
Sceaux, 2013 (sans catalogue)

C. Gustin-Gomez, Charles de la Fosse 1636-1716: le maître des Modernes, Dijon, 2006, vol.II, p.223, n° D 108 (repr. noir et blanc)

Laid down on thin Japan paper. Slight horizontal crease running across the centre of the sheet. Some light brown stains, barely visible. A small water stain in the lower right corner of the sheet. Surface dirt. Overall chalk remains strong and vibrant and image is powerful. Sold unframed.
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Dynamic and vibrant, this two-coloured chalk composition dates to the later part of La Fosse's career. First attributed to the artist in 1976 by Pierre Rosenberg, the drawing depicts the biblical story of the Conversion of St. Paul. La Fosse has chosen the moment, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, when Christ appears in a blinding flash of light to St Paul while he is on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus. It is an intense and complex composition which La Fosse handles with strong chalk lines and believable forms.

There is no known painting of this subject by La Fosse but as Clementine Gustin-Gomez points out, in her entry for the Rennes exhibition catalogue, the artist was clearly influenced and inspired in this composition by Laurent de La Hyre's painting of the same subject (1637) and by Charles Le Brun's Martyrdom of Saint Etienne (1651), both in the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, Paris. La Fosse borrows the pose of Christ from Le Brun's painting and his Saint Paul echoes La Hyre's Saint, who is depicted on the ground, his foot still in its stirrup, across his fallen horse.

Gustin-Gomez questions why La Fosse might have executed such a drawing, discussing the fact that its composition is in reverse to La Hyre's painting and that no actual painting by La Fosse seems to survive. Her appealing suggestion is that La Fosse was simply producing a work in homage to two great artists he admired.
Stylistically, the drawing fits into the artist's late career and is dated by Gustin Gomez to circa 1700. She remarks that not only is the use of coloured chalks a distinct trait of La Fosse's oeuvre but that his choice of buff paper, beige and slightly pink, is also a key element in the aesthetic of his draughtsmanship.