FRANÇOIS LEMOYNE | PUTTI PLAYING IN A LANDSCAPE

Jean François de Troy (1679 - 1752);

His sale, Paris, Remy, 9 April - 5 May 1764, lot 133, along with pair, for 230 livres to Menageot (as François le Moine . . . Deux Tableaux des plus précieux de ce grand Peintre, ils représentent des enfans, les uns qui jouent avec les armes de Dieu Mars, & les autres avec des fleches; ils sont sur bois & portent chacun 4 pouces 9 lignes de haut, sur 4 pouces de large);

François Michel Harenc de Presles, Paris;

His sale, Paris, Lebrun, 16-24 April 1792, lot 55, along with pair, where probably withdrawn (as F. Le Moine);

His sale, Paris, Lebrun, 30 April 1795, lot 64, along with pair, to Joseph Alexandre Lebrun (as F. Le Moine);

Wakefield Christie-Miller (née Christy, d. 1898), Britwell Court, Burnham, Bucks;

Thence by descent to Sydney Richardson Christie-Miller (d. 1931);

Thence by descent to Major Samuel Vandeleur Christie-Miller, Salisbury, Clarendon Park;

Anonymous sale "The Property of a Lady", London, Sotheby's, 7 July 1976, lot 50 (as A. Watteau);

There acquired by Faustus Gallery;

With Bob P. Haboldt & Co., New York;

From whom acquired. 

J. Mathey, “Early Paintings of Watteau,” in Art Quarterly, 1956, p. 21-22 (as Antoine Watteau);

J. Lévy, "Antoine Watteau et Le Moyne," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris 1958, p. 347-52;

F.J.B. Watson, “Watteau, Peintre Inconnu,” in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 104, no. 708, 1962, p. 126 (as Lemoyne);

G. Macchia and E.C. Montagni, L’opera completa di Watteau, Milan 1968, cat. 1^o-A;

J.L. Bordeaux, Francois Le Moyne and his Generation, Neuilly-sur-Seine 1984, p. 89, cat. no. P39, reproduced fig. 35;

J. Baillio, The Arts of France from Francois Ier to Napoleon Ier, New York 2005, p. 148, under cat. no. 41, note 4 (as François Lemoyne).

This small sketch by François Lemoyne, along with its pendant in the Harvard Art Museums (inv. no. 1930.184), once belonged to the artist Jean François de Troy. Both were engraved as a pair by Nicolas Charles de Silvestre, but by the early 19th century, the two were separated from one another and their attributions. Having once been called Fragonard and Watteau, the present example was returned to Lemoyne's corpus in 1958 by Levy, though Lemoyne seems to have drawn direct inspiration from Watteau's Cupid's Realm of circa 1709.¹ 

1. Oil on canvas, 13 by 17.8 cm, private collection. See Baillio 2005, cat. no. 41.