Lot Essay
While the present picture is one of the most popular and well known images of 18th Century French art, surprisingly little is known regarding the circumstances of its commission. Questions regarding both the dating and subsequent provenance of the picture add to the general air of mystery surrounding its early history which may in part be explained by the fact that, despite being often referred to in general terms by scholars of the period, no detailed study has been undertaken since Jean Cailleux's article of 1960, op. cit. Yet all commentators repeatedly eulogize the picture's technical brilliance, emphasizing its 'great importance' both in the assessment of Jean-François de Troy's artistic achievement and towards general understanding of French art of the period (see, for instance, Holmes, loc. cit. and Nicolson, loc. cit.).
The earliest written reference to the picture relates to its sojourn in the collection of Frederick the Great. It is recorded by both Oesterreich, loc. cit., and Nikolai, loc. cit., in 1773 and 1779 as forming part of the Royal Collection at Sans-Souci, Potsdam. Oesterreich records the picture as hanging in the Seconde Chambre which formed 'la chambre suivante...ornée de plusieurs tableaux' after the Chambre de Concert (op. cit., p. 75). He devotes more attention to it than to the other pictures in the room, describing it as 'Une conversation de Dames, où un Cavalier lit tandis que tous les autres écoutent avec attention. Il y a beaucoup d'expression et de verité dans ce petit tableau, peint sur toile par de Troy.' At this point the present picture was the pendant to a second 'Conversation', identifiable with La Déclaration de l'Amour (fig. A) now back in its eighteenth-century location at Sans-Souci, (ibid., p. 77). Both pictures were probably among the many acquired by Count von Rothenburg who was sent to Paris by Frederick the Great in 1744 to buy pictures for the Royal Collection (P. Seiden, Les Collections d'art de Frédéric le Grand à l'Exposition de Paris de 1900, Berlin, 1900, pp. 10 ff.). Helmut Börsch-Supan states in his catalogue entry for the latter picture in the 1963 Paris exhibition, loc. cit., that the present picture continued to hang next to La Déclaration de l'Amour in the 'salle d'audiences' of Sans-Souci until 1806, when it was seized on behalf of Baron Vivant-Denon. Unfortunately there is no trace of the picture either in the 1826 sale of Baron Vivant-Denon's collection or in the 1846 sale of the collection of his nephew and heir Baron Brunet-Denon, and no record has as yet been discovered of how the picture passed into the collection of William, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale.
The Earl of Lonsdale was not alone in England in his affection for the work of de Troy, for as Watson has noted 'a large number of de Troy's works, especially his conversations galantes, came to England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries' and were then presumed 'lost' (F.J.B. Watson, A Note on some Missing Works by de Troy, The Burlington Magazine, XCII, no. 563, Feb. 1950, pp. 50-3). The subsequent history of the picture in England is documented up to the present day (see Provenance). It was presumably one of its English owners who entitled it La Lecture de Molière, for none of the earlier references refers to it by this title. While Philip Conisbee has pointed out 'the reading matter is more likely to be a naughty contemporary roman, rather than Molière' (op. cit., 1986, p. 534), Sir Michael Levey has proposed that the picture may show a contemporary playwright reading his work.
But when and for whom was this exquisite interior painted? The picture is signed and dated, but the date, which is difficult to decipher, has posed problems. At the beginning of the century it was said to read 1740 (Holmes, loc. cit.). Brière first dated the picture to 1710 (loc. cit. 1930), but subsequently revised his opinion and became more cautious, claiming that the date was 'probablement effacée' (loc. cit., 1931). Neither a date of 1710 nor 1740 seems credible in view of de Troy's stylistic development. De Troy's earliest essays in the genre characterized as tableaux de mode by Mariette do not appear until 1723, see, for instance, The Alarm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The artist then publicly reaffirmed his commitment to the new genre by exhibiting no less than four tableaux de mode at the salon of 1725: La Déclaration and La Jarretière détachée (Wrightsman Collection, New York), Le Jeu du Pied-de-Boeuf (recorded in the Seligman Collection in 1930; a copy in the National Gallery, London) and a Déjeuner à la Campagne (whereabouts unknown). De Troy continued to produce such works to great acclaim and success for the rest of his time in Paris. As Mariette pointed out in 1762 'il a beaucoup plu à Paris pour ses petits tableaux de modes, qui sont en effet plus soignés que ses grands tableaux d'histoire' (P.-J. Mariette, Abécédario, in Archives de l'Art Français, IV, Paris, 1853-4, p. 101). The last dated works in this idiom such as the Déjeuner de Chasse près d'une Fontaine (Wallace Collection, London), painted for the petits appartements du Roi at Fontainebleau, are dated 1737. The following year de Troy became Director of the French Academy in Rome and ceased to produce tableaux de mode. De Troy's interest in the genre lasted, therefore, from 1723 to 1737/8, a period during which he himself was inextricably linked to a Parisian haute société whose way of life he shared, and among which he established a clientèle more than eager to purchase depictions of its lifestyle.
It was Jean Cailleux in 1960, loc. cit., who first considered dating La Lecture de Molière by means of the objects depicted within the picture itself. He noted that the Régence sconces above the mantlepiece belong to a period after 1723, and that the silver teapot is of a type which came into general use from 1717-18 onwards. The pattern on the arabesque screen can be dated even more closely, as it derives from an engraving by Boucher after Watteau's Dénicheur de Moineaux published in December 1727. Moreover, Gersaint is recorded as advertising in the Mercure de France of the same year a similar screen inspired by Watteau; in 1727 and the years immediately following, such screens were extremely fashionable. Both the male and female costumes correspond closely with Dr. Aileen Ribiero's description of fashions in dress in the late 1720s and early 1730s. The men wear the typical coat with stiffened side pleats and large stiff cuffs of winter velvet in plain understated colours; indeed the seated gentleman wears grey which was said to be the winter colour in the Mercure de France of 1729, p. 619. The ladies wear a 'saque dress', or 'robe volante', again all the rage in the same year according to the Mercure de France, 1729, p. 611 (A. Ribiero, Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789, London, 1984, pp. 20-37). Large brocades and damasks, such as that worn by the lady seated second from the left, increased in popularity in the 1730s. The design of the silk of the dress of the lady seated on the extreme left has, however, been dated slightly earlier to 'around 1728' by Peter Thornton, loc. cit.. This led Jean Cailleux, loc. cit., to date the picture itself to the same year, with which the majority of subsequent commentators agree.
La Déclaration d'Amour at Sans-Souci is clearly dated 1731. Although our first record of the two pictures as pendants dates from 1773, it was not uncommon for de Troy to produce his tableaux de mode in pairs, as with La Déclaration and La Jarretière détachée in the salon of 1725. Not only is the present picture of virtually identical dimensions (72.4 x 90.8 and 71 x 91cm.), scale and format, it also provides a logical foil to the Sans-Souci canvas both in subject matter and design. The latter presents a scene of gallantry outdoors on a terrace in the summer which contrasts amusingly with the alternative indoor pursuits enforced by the winter afternoon depicted in the present picture. Both provide contrasting but complementary views: a party dispersed throughout an ample park in the heat of summer, and a cosy intimate group in front of a fire on a chilly winter's day. The rather striking perspectival viewpoints of the artist, emphasized in the present picture through the lines of the parquet floor, also seem to suggest the existence of a pair, for the artist appears to be standing midway between the two pictures watching the interior scene to his right and the exterior to his left. In view of these arguments, a slightly later date of 1730/31 may be proposed for the present picture pending a further technical examination of the inscribed date.
In discussing the possible circumstances of the commissioning of the present picture, it is useful, in the absence of more specific information, to consider the known facts of de Troy's career in the years around 1730. In 1727 he won joint first prize for his Repos de Diane at the disputed royal Concours organized by the Duc d'Antin. Although this did not dent his ambition to obtain official royal recognition, it appears he turned increasingly to private clients for patronage. During this period de Troy worked for some of the most powerful financiers in France. From 1726-9 he was employed by Monsieur de la Live to paint thirty-six pictures for his house in the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. In 1728 he is also recorded as providing 'plusieurs tableaux pour les appartements de Samuel Bernard' the wealthy banker, and in 1733 he completed La Préparation pour le Bal (Getty Museum, Malibu), and Le Retour du Bal (whereabouts unknown) for the Minister Chauvelin 'mais sa disgrâce empêcha de les lui faire parvenir' (L. Dussieux, Mémoires inédites sur la vie et les ouvrages des membres de l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, II, Paris, 1854, p. 275). It would seem highly possible that the present picture and its pendant were commissioned by a man of similar social background, or were painted in the hope of attracting a buyer from among the wealthy bankers of Paris. There is, unfortunately, no evidence to support Cailleux's hypothesis that Samuel Bernard himself may have been the picture's first owner.
All de Troy's early biographers emphasize the artist's personal social success amongst the wealthy, sophisticated salon society of 1720s and 1730s Paris. He derived both inspiration and clientèle for his tableaux de modes among a select social group of which he himself was a privileged member. Dezallier D'Argenville claims that it was the artist's 'génie' that initially 'se fasoit ouverture partout' (A.-J. Dezallier D'Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, IV, Paris, 1762, p. 366). Through his bearing and social talent he rapidly became accepted as 'un homme du monde', according to Mariette (op. cit., pp. 101-2). With typical determination and panache de Troy further strengthened his financial and social claim to his already strong position in salon society through marriage in 1732 to the heiress Mlle Deslandes, thirty-four years his junior. In 1735 he purchased the office of Secrétaire du Roi. Two years later he was created Chevalier de Saint-Michel by King Louis XV in anticipation of his move to Rome to take up the post of Director of the Academy in the following year. No artist, therefore, was better placed at the beginning of the eighteenth century to chronicle and comment upon the lives and concerns of the Parisian social and financial élite.
The present picture is more than a mere objective description of a Parisian interior of c. 1730, even if it does convey 'some of the most delightful aspects of Parisian life indoors on the eve of the Rococo period' (P. Thornton, loc. cit.). De Troy's skill in creating a sense of immediacy and vivid material presence is undeniable and has even perversely led some observers, thereby, to dismiss his tableaux de mode as shallow and lacking in intellectual value. Yet the sheer visual delight and breathtaking technical skill in rendering the material world as shown in La Lecture de Molière lifts it far above the visually prosaic. The picture provides perhaps the most scintillating example of the originality and sophistication of de Troy's artistic vision. It can also be seen as a brilliant visual counterpoint to the witty epigrammatic style of salon literature: observant, penetrating and sophisticated. Both arts are informed by the flavour of salon conversation and it cannot be coincidental that Valory insisted that one should regard de Troy's work, as the 'saillies, ou si j'ose le dire, impromptu d'un très-habile homme' (L. Dussieux, op. cit., pp. 259-60). The present picture has become an icon of French art history; reproduced in all the major histories of French art of the period, its achievement has not always been understood or fairly evaluated, but its power to please and fascinate is as strong as ever. It exhibits all the 'génie brillant ... bon style, bon goût et richesse' that made de Troy, as Valory claimed in the eighteenth century, 'le peintre des rois et des grands ... un des meilleurs et même un des plus grands peintres de l'école française' (ibid., p. 273)
The earliest written reference to the picture relates to its sojourn in the collection of Frederick the Great. It is recorded by both Oesterreich, loc. cit., and Nikolai, loc. cit., in 1773 and 1779 as forming part of the Royal Collection at Sans-Souci, Potsdam. Oesterreich records the picture as hanging in the Seconde Chambre which formed 'la chambre suivante...ornée de plusieurs tableaux' after the Chambre de Concert (op. cit., p. 75). He devotes more attention to it than to the other pictures in the room, describing it as 'Une conversation de Dames, où un Cavalier lit tandis que tous les autres écoutent avec attention. Il y a beaucoup d'expression et de verité dans ce petit tableau, peint sur toile par de Troy.' At this point the present picture was the pendant to a second 'Conversation', identifiable with La Déclaration de l'Amour (fig. A) now back in its eighteenth-century location at Sans-Souci, (ibid., p. 77). Both pictures were probably among the many acquired by Count von Rothenburg who was sent to Paris by Frederick the Great in 1744 to buy pictures for the Royal Collection (P. Seiden, Les Collections d'art de Frédéric le Grand à l'Exposition de Paris de 1900, Berlin, 1900, pp. 10 ff.). Helmut Börsch-Supan states in his catalogue entry for the latter picture in the 1963 Paris exhibition, loc. cit., that the present picture continued to hang next to La Déclaration de l'Amour in the 'salle d'audiences' of Sans-Souci until 1806, when it was seized on behalf of Baron Vivant-Denon. Unfortunately there is no trace of the picture either in the 1826 sale of Baron Vivant-Denon's collection or in the 1846 sale of the collection of his nephew and heir Baron Brunet-Denon, and no record has as yet been discovered of how the picture passed into the collection of William, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale.
The Earl of Lonsdale was not alone in England in his affection for the work of de Troy, for as Watson has noted 'a large number of de Troy's works, especially his conversations galantes, came to England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries' and were then presumed 'lost' (F.J.B. Watson, A Note on some Missing Works by de Troy, The Burlington Magazine, XCII, no. 563, Feb. 1950, pp. 50-3). The subsequent history of the picture in England is documented up to the present day (see Provenance). It was presumably one of its English owners who entitled it La Lecture de Molière, for none of the earlier references refers to it by this title. While Philip Conisbee has pointed out 'the reading matter is more likely to be a naughty contemporary roman, rather than Molière' (op. cit., 1986, p. 534), Sir Michael Levey has proposed that the picture may show a contemporary playwright reading his work.
But when and for whom was this exquisite interior painted? The picture is signed and dated, but the date, which is difficult to decipher, has posed problems. At the beginning of the century it was said to read 1740 (Holmes, loc. cit.). Brière first dated the picture to 1710 (loc. cit. 1930), but subsequently revised his opinion and became more cautious, claiming that the date was 'probablement effacée' (loc. cit., 1931). Neither a date of 1710 nor 1740 seems credible in view of de Troy's stylistic development. De Troy's earliest essays in the genre characterized as tableaux de mode by Mariette do not appear until 1723, see, for instance, The Alarm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The artist then publicly reaffirmed his commitment to the new genre by exhibiting no less than four tableaux de mode at the salon of 1725: La Déclaration and La Jarretière détachée (Wrightsman Collection, New York), Le Jeu du Pied-de-Boeuf (recorded in the Seligman Collection in 1930; a copy in the National Gallery, London) and a Déjeuner à la Campagne (whereabouts unknown). De Troy continued to produce such works to great acclaim and success for the rest of his time in Paris. As Mariette pointed out in 1762 'il a beaucoup plu à Paris pour ses petits tableaux de modes, qui sont en effet plus soignés que ses grands tableaux d'histoire' (P.-J. Mariette, Abécédario, in Archives de l'Art Français, IV, Paris, 1853-4, p. 101). The last dated works in this idiom such as the Déjeuner de Chasse près d'une Fontaine (Wallace Collection, London), painted for the petits appartements du Roi at Fontainebleau, are dated 1737. The following year de Troy became Director of the French Academy in Rome and ceased to produce tableaux de mode. De Troy's interest in the genre lasted, therefore, from 1723 to 1737/8, a period during which he himself was inextricably linked to a Parisian haute société whose way of life he shared, and among which he established a clientèle more than eager to purchase depictions of its lifestyle.
It was Jean Cailleux in 1960, loc. cit., who first considered dating La Lecture de Molière by means of the objects depicted within the picture itself. He noted that the Régence sconces above the mantlepiece belong to a period after 1723, and that the silver teapot is of a type which came into general use from 1717-18 onwards. The pattern on the arabesque screen can be dated even more closely, as it derives from an engraving by Boucher after Watteau's Dénicheur de Moineaux published in December 1727. Moreover, Gersaint is recorded as advertising in the Mercure de France of the same year a similar screen inspired by Watteau; in 1727 and the years immediately following, such screens were extremely fashionable. Both the male and female costumes correspond closely with Dr. Aileen Ribiero's description of fashions in dress in the late 1720s and early 1730s. The men wear the typical coat with stiffened side pleats and large stiff cuffs of winter velvet in plain understated colours; indeed the seated gentleman wears grey which was said to be the winter colour in the Mercure de France of 1729, p. 619. The ladies wear a 'saque dress', or 'robe volante', again all the rage in the same year according to the Mercure de France, 1729, p. 611 (A. Ribiero, Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789, London, 1984, pp. 20-37). Large brocades and damasks, such as that worn by the lady seated second from the left, increased in popularity in the 1730s. The design of the silk of the dress of the lady seated on the extreme left has, however, been dated slightly earlier to 'around 1728' by Peter Thornton, loc. cit.. This led Jean Cailleux, loc. cit., to date the picture itself to the same year, with which the majority of subsequent commentators agree.
La Déclaration d'Amour at Sans-Souci is clearly dated 1731. Although our first record of the two pictures as pendants dates from 1773, it was not uncommon for de Troy to produce his tableaux de mode in pairs, as with La Déclaration and La Jarretière détachée in the salon of 1725. Not only is the present picture of virtually identical dimensions (72.4 x 90.8 and 71 x 91cm.), scale and format, it also provides a logical foil to the Sans-Souci canvas both in subject matter and design. The latter presents a scene of gallantry outdoors on a terrace in the summer which contrasts amusingly with the alternative indoor pursuits enforced by the winter afternoon depicted in the present picture. Both provide contrasting but complementary views: a party dispersed throughout an ample park in the heat of summer, and a cosy intimate group in front of a fire on a chilly winter's day. The rather striking perspectival viewpoints of the artist, emphasized in the present picture through the lines of the parquet floor, also seem to suggest the existence of a pair, for the artist appears to be standing midway between the two pictures watching the interior scene to his right and the exterior to his left. In view of these arguments, a slightly later date of 1730/31 may be proposed for the present picture pending a further technical examination of the inscribed date.
In discussing the possible circumstances of the commissioning of the present picture, it is useful, in the absence of more specific information, to consider the known facts of de Troy's career in the years around 1730. In 1727 he won joint first prize for his Repos de Diane at the disputed royal Concours organized by the Duc d'Antin. Although this did not dent his ambition to obtain official royal recognition, it appears he turned increasingly to private clients for patronage. During this period de Troy worked for some of the most powerful financiers in France. From 1726-9 he was employed by Monsieur de la Live to paint thirty-six pictures for his house in the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. In 1728 he is also recorded as providing 'plusieurs tableaux pour les appartements de Samuel Bernard' the wealthy banker, and in 1733 he completed La Préparation pour le Bal (Getty Museum, Malibu), and Le Retour du Bal (whereabouts unknown) for the Minister Chauvelin 'mais sa disgrâce empêcha de les lui faire parvenir' (L. Dussieux, Mémoires inédites sur la vie et les ouvrages des membres de l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, II, Paris, 1854, p. 275). It would seem highly possible that the present picture and its pendant were commissioned by a man of similar social background, or were painted in the hope of attracting a buyer from among the wealthy bankers of Paris. There is, unfortunately, no evidence to support Cailleux's hypothesis that Samuel Bernard himself may have been the picture's first owner.
All de Troy's early biographers emphasize the artist's personal social success amongst the wealthy, sophisticated salon society of 1720s and 1730s Paris. He derived both inspiration and clientèle for his tableaux de modes among a select social group of which he himself was a privileged member. Dezallier D'Argenville claims that it was the artist's 'génie' that initially 'se fasoit ouverture partout' (A.-J. Dezallier D'Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, IV, Paris, 1762, p. 366). Through his bearing and social talent he rapidly became accepted as 'un homme du monde', according to Mariette (op. cit., pp. 101-2). With typical determination and panache de Troy further strengthened his financial and social claim to his already strong position in salon society through marriage in 1732 to the heiress Mlle Deslandes, thirty-four years his junior. In 1735 he purchased the office of Secrétaire du Roi. Two years later he was created Chevalier de Saint-Michel by King Louis XV in anticipation of his move to Rome to take up the post of Director of the Academy in the following year. No artist, therefore, was better placed at the beginning of the eighteenth century to chronicle and comment upon the lives and concerns of the Parisian social and financial élite.
The present picture is more than a mere objective description of a Parisian interior of c. 1730, even if it does convey 'some of the most delightful aspects of Parisian life indoors on the eve of the Rococo period' (P. Thornton, loc. cit.). De Troy's skill in creating a sense of immediacy and vivid material presence is undeniable and has even perversely led some observers, thereby, to dismiss his tableaux de mode as shallow and lacking in intellectual value. Yet the sheer visual delight and breathtaking technical skill in rendering the material world as shown in La Lecture de Molière lifts it far above the visually prosaic. The picture provides perhaps the most scintillating example of the originality and sophistication of de Troy's artistic vision. It can also be seen as a brilliant visual counterpoint to the witty epigrammatic style of salon literature: observant, penetrating and sophisticated. Both arts are informed by the flavour of salon conversation and it cannot be coincidental that Valory insisted that one should regard de Troy's work, as the 'saillies, ou si j'ose le dire, impromptu d'un très-habile homme' (L. Dussieux, op. cit., pp. 259-60). The present picture has become an icon of French art history; reproduced in all the major histories of French art of the period, its achievement has not always been understood or fairly evaluated, but its power to please and fascinate is as strong as ever. It exhibits all the 'génie brillant ... bon style, bon goût et richesse' that made de Troy, as Valory claimed in the eighteenth century, 'le peintre des rois et des grands ... un des meilleurs et même un des plus grands peintres de l'école française' (ibid., p. 273)