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Lot Essay
Jacques-François Swebach Desfontaines trained in the studio of his father, the painter, engraver and sculptor François-Louis Swebach, and with Michel Hanson Duplessis. A child prodigy, he first exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance in Paris at the age of only fourteen, using the pseudonym Fountein. The present work, drawn in 1788 when Swebach was nineteen, is undoubtedly the masterpiece of his early period. The crowded scene shows Paris society promenading along the fashionable Boulevard du Temple at the eve of the Revolution. The elaborate fashions and knowing glances of the elegant company often border on caricature, and are closely related to the popular fashion plates of artists such as Debucourt (see lot 476) which both celebrate and mock the excesses of the Ancien Regime.
The present drawing was made in the year that Swebach first exhibited under his own name at the Salon de la Jeunesse. His submissions to that exhibition won him wide acclaim, and it seems likely that finished watercolours such as the present drawing were made to meet the demand of patrons, such as John Duff of Drummuir, who visited his studio.
Following the Revolution Swebach began to concentrate on the military and equestrian scenes for which he is perhaps best known. His scenes of Revolutionary, Republican and Imperial events were popular, and he exhibited frequently at the Salon. From 1803 to 1813 Swebach was Premier Peintre at the Sèvres porcelain factory, and following the Restoration of the Monarchy he worked for Tsar Alexander I as Premier Peintre at the Imperial porcelain factory in Saint Petersburg.
The present drawing was made in the year that Swebach first exhibited under his own name at the Salon de la Jeunesse. His submissions to that exhibition won him wide acclaim, and it seems likely that finished watercolours such as the present drawing were made to meet the demand of patrons, such as John Duff of Drummuir, who visited his studio.
Following the Revolution Swebach began to concentrate on the military and equestrian scenes for which he is perhaps best known. His scenes of Revolutionary, Republican and Imperial events were popular, and he exhibited frequently at the Salon. From 1803 to 1813 Swebach was Premier Peintre at the Sèvres porcelain factory, and following the Restoration of the Monarchy he worked for Tsar Alexander I as Premier Peintre at the Imperial porcelain factory in Saint Petersburg.