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拍品专文
Though Alexandre-François Desportes' career began in Poland painting royal portraits, it is his animal works, painted in the Flemish tradition, for which he is most famous. Shortly after his arrival in Paris, he became a student of the Flemish painter Nicasius Bernaerts (1620 - 1678), who had also trained with Frans Snyders. Bernaerts encouraged Desportes to draw directly from nature, en plein air. In 1699, afer having been recalled to France from Poland by Louis XIV, Desportes was reçu into the Académie Royale as an animal painter. The following year, he became the official painter of hunting scenes and animals to Louis XIV and continued in this role under Louis XV.
It was the accuracy and the realism of Desportes' pictures that so impressed Louis XIV. The critic P.J. Mariette wrote in his monograph of the artist that 'the secret of his success was that he made it an inviolable rule to work only from nature'. Upon his death, the contents of his studio, including oil sketches and drawings remained in his family's possession until 1784. In that year, the entire collection was purchased by the comte d'Angiviller, the Directeur des Batiments du Roi, to be used as models for the decoration of the porcelain at the Sèvres manufactory.
Dr. Pierre Jacky, to whom we are grateful, has confirmed the attribution of the present lot to Alexandre-François Desportes and will include them in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist. He relates this pair to two compositions of 1719 (Abbaye de Chaalis, Ermenonville) and more precisely to two corresponding pictures of 1727 (private collection). In contrast to the 1719 pair, there are plants in the foreground of An extensive landscape with a pointer flushing a pheasant by a thistle, which are derived from his studies of thistles and other plants (Manufacture Nationale, Sèvres). The pheasant in the other picture relates to a study executed in 1711 (Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris).
It was the accuracy and the realism of Desportes' pictures that so impressed Louis XIV. The critic P.J. Mariette wrote in his monograph of the artist that 'the secret of his success was that he made it an inviolable rule to work only from nature'. Upon his death, the contents of his studio, including oil sketches and drawings remained in his family's possession until 1784. In that year, the entire collection was purchased by the comte d'Angiviller, the Directeur des Batiments du Roi, to be used as models for the decoration of the porcelain at the Sèvres manufactory.
Dr. Pierre Jacky, to whom we are grateful, has confirmed the attribution of the present lot to Alexandre-François Desportes and will include them in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist. He relates this pair to two compositions of 1719 (Abbaye de Chaalis, Ermenonville) and more precisely to two corresponding pictures of 1727 (private collection). In contrast to the 1719 pair, there are plants in the foreground of An extensive landscape with a pointer flushing a pheasant by a thistle, which are derived from his studies of thistles and other plants (Manufacture Nationale, Sèvres). The pheasant in the other picture relates to a study executed in 1711 (Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris).