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Lot Essay
In The Baptism of the Condé the baby Louis II de Bourbon, 4th prince of Condé, otherwise known as Le Grand Condé, is depicted in the arms of a lady-in-waiting. His father Henri II de Bourbon and his mother Charlotte de Montmorency are seated in the center of the composition with the code of arms of the family prominently placed behind them. All three of these recognisable characters in the composition are remarkable for their colourful stories.
Henri II de Bourbon was a political leader in France who was forced to leave his country for a short period in 1609 because of the attentions paid to his wife Charlotte de Montmorency by King Henry IV of France. Following the death of the King, Henri II de Bourbon returned to France and formed a conspiracy against Concino Concini, a powerful persona in the government of the Regent Marie de Medici. These efforts resulted in his imprisonment for three years (1616-19). During Louis XIV's reign, Henry II de Bourbon made peace with the government and joined the young King's council of regency.
Louis II de Bourbon, Le Grand Condé, was born in 1621 in Paris. He was one of France's greatest military leaders and he is best remembered for his legendary victories at Rocroi, Fribourg, Nordlingen and against Austria at Lens. At the time of the Fronde (1648-53) - series of outbreaks during the minority of King Louis XIV - Louis II de Bourbon absconded to the Spanish side and was condemned to death as a traitor. Later he reconciled himself with Louis XIV and was restored to his great military leadership in France. Considering Louis XIV's character this was no small achievement by any means.
Louis II de Bourbon was considered as one of the most extraordinary and controversial leaders of his time. He was a man of wide intellectual interests, of unconventional habits, and possessed of an uncommonly sound independence of mind. His attitude both to religion and to politics was unorthodox, for he was as rebellious to ecclesiastical dogma as to the authority of the King. He was a great protector of artists and intellectuals, including the famous Molière and La Bruyère, who was his son's tutor.
One of the most unusual and notable of the world's famous diamonds - a 50 carat light pink, pear-shaped Grand Condé diamond - was presented to Louis II de Bourbon by King Louis XIV to distinguish him as the Grand Condé (currently on display at Musee de Condé in Chantilly). It is said that when Le Grand Condé arrived at Versailles to see the King he would climb unhurriedly up the now destroyed escallier de ambassadeurs which would prompt the King to announce 'Take your time, my cousin, the weight of the laurels of victory is slowing you down'. This very scene was painted by the famous Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme with the title Réception de Conde à Versailles. (G. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Coubevoie/Paris, 2000, p. 292, nos. 265 and 265.2).
The late 19th Century fashion for paintings depicting such lively groups of elaborately dressed cavaliers and their ladies was inspired, in part, by the movement amongst artists such as Delacroix, Ingres and Delaroche earlier in the century. They aimed to move away from the purely classical, religious or mythological subject toward scenes inspired by more recent French history.
This genre's roots, however, can be traced further back to the 17th Century and to the 'Company' pictures of Dutch guilds most famously executed by Franz Hals and Rembrandt. These large, fluent assemblies, along with their more modest if equally vivacious single figure versions, were enjoying a critical Renaissance in the 1860s. Paris, the greatest repository of Hals' art outside Holland, was set alight with admiration for his work and its influence was manifest from the conscious hommages of Ferdinand Roybet to the less overt debt of Edouard Manet. Hals' so-called Laughing Cavalier, for instance, was the subject of a celebrated Parisian saleroom battle in 1865 between the Marquess of Hertford and Baron James de Rothschild. Following the painting's purchase by the former for the spectacular price of 51,000 francs it was exhibited in Britain. The painting then entered into the Wallace Collection, which established it as a popular icon.
The tableaux costumés of Lesrel and his contemporaries such as François Brunery and Francesco Beda - for whom the rococo curlicues of Louis XV settings were more preferable - also owe something to another strain of Dutch art from the Golden Age, namely Leiden fijnschilder. Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu and Frans and Willem van Mieris, with their scenes replete with meticulous detail and a glassy precision of finish, offered the 19th Century artists examples of skilfully executed but accessible subjects, often invested with a wryly humorous subtext.
Henri II de Bourbon was a political leader in France who was forced to leave his country for a short period in 1609 because of the attentions paid to his wife Charlotte de Montmorency by King Henry IV of France. Following the death of the King, Henri II de Bourbon returned to France and formed a conspiracy against Concino Concini, a powerful persona in the government of the Regent Marie de Medici. These efforts resulted in his imprisonment for three years (1616-19). During Louis XIV's reign, Henry II de Bourbon made peace with the government and joined the young King's council of regency.
Louis II de Bourbon, Le Grand Condé, was born in 1621 in Paris. He was one of France's greatest military leaders and he is best remembered for his legendary victories at Rocroi, Fribourg, Nordlingen and against Austria at Lens. At the time of the Fronde (1648-53) - series of outbreaks during the minority of King Louis XIV - Louis II de Bourbon absconded to the Spanish side and was condemned to death as a traitor. Later he reconciled himself with Louis XIV and was restored to his great military leadership in France. Considering Louis XIV's character this was no small achievement by any means.
Louis II de Bourbon was considered as one of the most extraordinary and controversial leaders of his time. He was a man of wide intellectual interests, of unconventional habits, and possessed of an uncommonly sound independence of mind. His attitude both to religion and to politics was unorthodox, for he was as rebellious to ecclesiastical dogma as to the authority of the King. He was a great protector of artists and intellectuals, including the famous Molière and La Bruyère, who was his son's tutor.
One of the most unusual and notable of the world's famous diamonds - a 50 carat light pink, pear-shaped Grand Condé diamond - was presented to Louis II de Bourbon by King Louis XIV to distinguish him as the Grand Condé (currently on display at Musee de Condé in Chantilly). It is said that when Le Grand Condé arrived at Versailles to see the King he would climb unhurriedly up the now destroyed escallier de ambassadeurs which would prompt the King to announce 'Take your time, my cousin, the weight of the laurels of victory is slowing you down'. This very scene was painted by the famous Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme with the title Réception de Conde à Versailles. (G. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Coubevoie/Paris, 2000, p. 292, nos. 265 and 265.2).
The late 19th Century fashion for paintings depicting such lively groups of elaborately dressed cavaliers and their ladies was inspired, in part, by the movement amongst artists such as Delacroix, Ingres and Delaroche earlier in the century. They aimed to move away from the purely classical, religious or mythological subject toward scenes inspired by more recent French history.
This genre's roots, however, can be traced further back to the 17th Century and to the 'Company' pictures of Dutch guilds most famously executed by Franz Hals and Rembrandt. These large, fluent assemblies, along with their more modest if equally vivacious single figure versions, were enjoying a critical Renaissance in the 1860s. Paris, the greatest repository of Hals' art outside Holland, was set alight with admiration for his work and its influence was manifest from the conscious hommages of Ferdinand Roybet to the less overt debt of Edouard Manet. Hals' so-called Laughing Cavalier, for instance, was the subject of a celebrated Parisian saleroom battle in 1865 between the Marquess of Hertford and Baron James de Rothschild. Following the painting's purchase by the former for the spectacular price of 51,000 francs it was exhibited in Britain. The painting then entered into the Wallace Collection, which established it as a popular icon.
The tableaux costumés of Lesrel and his contemporaries such as François Brunery and Francesco Beda - for whom the rococo curlicues of Louis XV settings were more preferable - also owe something to another strain of Dutch art from the Golden Age, namely Leiden fijnschilder. Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu and Frans and Willem van Mieris, with their scenes replete with meticulous detail and a glassy precision of finish, offered the 19th Century artists examples of skilfully executed but accessible subjects, often invested with a wryly humorous subtext.