Live Auction 1138Old Master & British Paintings Day Sale
Jean-Simon Berthélemy (Laon 1743-1811 Paris)
Lot 255

Jean-Simon Berthélemy (Laon 1743-1811 Paris)

A wooded landscape with a bacchante playing the cymbals and a sleeping faun

Closed3 July 2013

Price Realised

GBP 35,000

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Jean-Simon Berthélemy (Laon 1743-1811 Paris)
A wooded landscape with a bacchante playing the cymbals and a sleeping faun
signed and dated 'Berthelemy 1783' (centre right)
oil on canvas, unframed
21¾ x 26 in. (55.3 x 66.1 cm.)

(Probably) Marquis de Véri, Paris; his sale, l'Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 12 December 1785, lot 47, where offered with its pendant 'Jupiter et Antiope'.
(Probably) Robert Henry, Earl of Pembroke (1791-1862); his sale (+), 19 Place Vendome, Paris, 30 June 1862, lot 24.
Mrs. Pauper; her sale (+), Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 12-15 March 1873 [first day], lot 1.
Gustave Mülbacher; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 15-18 May 1899 [first day], lot 1.
Etienne Accary; his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22-24 February 1939, lot 74.

Specialist note

This picture is almost certainly the painting noted in the collection of Robert Henry, 12th Earl of Pembroke (1791-1862), being of the same dimensions, description and date. The provenance can be traced through various collections until the Accary sale in 1939 (for full details on the provenance see Volle, op. cit., p. 88). As Sandoz suggested, in his monograph on the artist, it might also be the 'Bacchante étendue jouant des cymbales' recorded in the sale of the Marquis de Véri; while the dimensions recorded in the catalogue are bigger (75 x 94 cm.) they might include the frame. Another version of this composition, with minor variations, was engraved by Macret then by Schencker (ibid., figs. 34 and 35).