TOMASSO II

TOMASSO II

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 74. La Bergère des Alpes.

Jean-Pierre Péquignot

La Bergère des Alpes

Lot Closed

October 19, 03:13 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Jean-Pierre Péquignot

Baume-les-Dames 1765–1807 Naples

La Bergère des Alpes


inscribed on the tombstone lower left: TOMBEAU DU COMTE D'ORESTAN QUIS ES TUE ADELAIDE SA TENDRE EPOUSE BERGERE DES ALPES

oil on canvas

unframed: 140.3 x 77.8 cm.; 55¼ x 30⅝ in.

framed: 160 x 97.2 cm.; 63 x 38¼ in.


This lot should have a W symbol and will be sent to Greenford park after the sale. Please refer to the online catalogue for further information.

This painting represents a scene from Jean-François Marmontel's play La Bergère des Alpes (The Shepherdess of the Alps), published in 1766 as part of his Contes Moraux (Moral Tales). The story inspired numerous artworks. It recounts the tragic tale of two young French aristocrats: Adelaide and her lover, the Count D'Orestan. In the face of objections to their match from their families, the pair run away together, but the count then dies suddenly. In her grief, Adelaide digs his grave with her bare hands, renounces the world, and thereafter lives as a shepherdess in the mountains, until she reveals her true identity to another nobleman, Fonrose.


The composition of this work shares a number of characteristics with Claude-Joseph Vernet's depiction of the same scene in similar upright format, today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 8316).1



1 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010052980