Jean-Jacques Spoede (Antwerp 1680-1757 Paris)

This pair of drawings has had a circuitous attribution history, although most recently they have been convincingly been attributed to Spoede, a Flemish artist and art dealer who was also a student of Watteau's in Paris. They are thought to be part of a group of at least nineteen sheets after original (now lost) drawings by Claude Gillot (1673-1722). The female gardener appears on a sheet of twelve figure studies formerly with Gallerie Cailleux, Paris that has been variously attributed to Pierre Quillard (1704-1773) and an anonymous member of Gillot's studio (Tonkovich, op. cit., p. 623, fig. 137). These pastoral characters derive from the French stage.