Lot n° 51
Estimation :
100000 - 150000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 128 000EUR
Pierre- François- Léonard FONTAINE (Pontoise... - Lot 51 - Ader
Pierre- François- Léonard FONTAINE (Pontoise 1762 - Paris 1853)
An album including 160 drawings, sketches and watercolours mounted on 51 blue cardboards
The drawings are glued on the edges only (all are numbered in pen and black ink at the bottom right), two are double-sided and only one drawing is signed.
On the title page, inscription in pen and black ink: "N1/Album/ of/ Drawings, Sketches, Watercolours/ by/ P.F.L. Fontaine,/architect/1785- 1850".
A handwritten table of the drawings contained in this album is on the last page of the album.
Gilt edges.
Five-ribbed binding, titled "P.F.L. Fontaine, sketches, drawings and watercolours".
(Some wear on the binding).
Size of the album : 36,5 x 48 cm
Provenance:
- Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine.
- Bequest of all his drawings to his daughter Aimé-Sophie Dupuis (born in 1803), who married his pupil the architect Louis-Symphorien Meunié.
- His son Georges Meunié (1833-1927), then the latter's wife Félicie Meunié d'Hostel (1843-1936), who mounted the drawings in albums; her bookplate on the inside cover of the binding.
- By descent, Dallemagne collection.
Without Fontaine, Paris would not be Paris, and the Empire would not have been so brilliant. The exceptional longevity of Fontaine, who died at the age of 91, allowed him to live through all regimes. Like Talleyrand, he put his talent at the disposal of France, and knew how to bend to politics, always at the service of civil architecture and the glorious representation of his country.
Pierre-François Léonard was born in 1762. As a teenager, his father, an architect and fountain-maker, employed him in his work for the Prince of Conti at the Château de l'Isle-Adam. In 1779 he entered the school of architecture of Peyre le Jeune, where he met his alter ego Percier. "Because it was him, because it was me": Percier and Fontaine perpetuated the tradition of Montaigne and La Boétie. In the meantime, Fontaine was admitted to the Royal Academy of Architecture in 1782. In 1785, he won the Second Prize in the Prix de Rome competition. Fontaine did not win the official place as a boarder and took the initiative, leaving for Rome at once, eager to discover the wonders of Italy. He was joined by Percier, who had won the Grand Prix in 1786. In 1787, Fontaine also became a boarder at the Académie de France, in the Mancini Palace in Rome. The "Etruscans", as they were called, never left each other's side.
This album is a moving testimony of his Italian years. Numbered Alpha, this album contains a previously unpublished quantity of drawings made during his peregrinations in the Roman countryside and in Rome. It bears witness to his continuous work in the numerous surveys of antiques and fragments of sculpted or painted decorations.
It continues with formidable documents on the great works in the service of the First Consul and then the Emperor: decoration of the chapel at La Malmaison, development of the park at Saint Cloud, decoration for the Opéra Comique, the construction of the rue de Rivoli, the staircase of the Conseil d'État at the Tuileries, and the survey of Saint-Denis, which was devastated by the revolutionaries...
100 000 / 150 000 €14525_1
List of the 51 mounts and descriptions
Mounting n°1
View of a temple on a cliff overlooking the sea
Brown wash on black pencil lines
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