Lot n° 39
Estimation :
20000 - 30000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 24 320EUR
Jean-Pierre PEQUIGNOT (Baume-les-Dames, 1765... - Lot 39 - Ader
Jean-Pierre PEQUIGNOT (Baume-les-Dames, 1765 - Sorrento 1807?)
The education of Achilles in a landscape
Canvas
Signed, localized and dated lower left "P. Pequignot / in Naples . 1807."
76 x 102 cm
(Accidents)
Provenance :
Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot (Piasa), December 17, 2008, n° 89.
The landscape is inspired by the village of Cava dei Tirreni, on the route of the Grand Tour.
The nymph Thetis, forced by Zeus to unite with the mortal Peleus, gives birth to seven sons whom she immerses in fire to purify them from their mortal nature. Only Achilles survives and he will be the hero of the Aeneid.
Jean-Pierre Péquignot was rediscovered in 2005 thanks to the work of Émilie Beck Saiello: two exhibitions (at the Louvre and in Dijon) accompanied by the publication of the catalog raisonné, allowed him to return works wrongly attributed to others and, in particular, to Girodet.
Péquignot's talent was recognized and encouraged very early on, which led him to leave his native Franche-Comté to study in Paris. From a modest background, he was able to find protectors who allowed him to complete his training in Italy. He first went to Rome where he became friends with Girodet. In 1793, as the revolutionary fever took hold of the city, both of them took refuge with other French artists in Naples, from where Jean-Pierre Péquignot sent this letter: "My plan is to travel around Naples and to stay there long enough to get from this country what it offers that is interesting for art. There he rubbed shoulders with Réattu, with whom he discovered the mountain landscape.
When Girodet chose to return to France, Péquignot remained alone in Naples where he had made a name for himself and lived off his art. The amateurs, who saw in him a new Claude Lorrain, appreciated his finesse of execution, especially in the treatment of trees, but he fell ill and died in poverty in 1807, at the dawn of Romanticism.
It is therefore one of his last works that we present here. This cultivated artist often borrowed subjects from ancient history to paint the grandeur of nature in nuanced tones, carefully treating his figures "à l'antique". The site is inspired by a village near Naples: Cava dei Tirreni, noted on travel itineraries in the eighteenth century. We can compare L'éducation d'Achille with the painting preserved in the Besançon museum: Paysage des environs de Naples, (canvas, 55 x 80 cm, S.b.d.: P.Péquignot à Naples 1803). The Besançon landscape, with its foliage filtering the light and its subtle harmony of green, gray and blue, is one of the artist's most accomplished works in the rendering of light and chromatic effects. The bluish clouds blur the contours that previously seemed too cut out (cf. Emilie Beck Saiello; pp. 94-95, T.16, repr.)
(related bibliography: Emilie Beck Saiello: Jean-Pierre Péquignot (Beaume-les-Dames, 1765 ? Naples, 1807), Artema, 2005).
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