26/6/23 - Acquisitions - Paris, Fondation Custodia - Ger Luijten, the director of the Fondation Custodia, who died suddenly at the end of last year (see news item of 20/12/22), was such a bulimic of acquisitions that it was difficult for us to keep track of them. He bought quickly and securely, and a verbal agreement was as reliable a guarantee as a signed piece of paper. But of course he had not foreseen his sudden death, which sometimes made it difficult to conclude certain transactions that he had approved. Many of them were nevertheless completed, and here again it will be difficult to be exhaustive.
Although he had chosen, since his arrival at the head of the institution, to enrich the collection of nineteenth-century landscape sketches initiated by the donation of Carlos van Hasselt, he realised a few months before his death that this ensemble was now sufficiently complete and that it was time to move on to something else. He therefore wanted to focus his purchases more on finished sketches, this time of figures or historical scenes. And he had started in this direction, buying two paintings from the Galerie Mendes, one French, the other Portuguese. And as with the landscapes and his other purchases, Ger Luijten had once again demonstrated his very good taste.
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- 1. Alexis Lemaistre (1852-1932)
Male Nude from the Back, 1874
Oil on panel - 28 x 41 cm
Paris, Fondation Custodia
Photo: Galerie Mendes - See the image in its page
The first is a painting by Alexis Lemaistre (ill. 1), a pupil of Léon Bonnat. It depicts a seated male nude, seen from the side, shown in a studio in front of a taut white sheet, the purpose of which is to better highlight the model’s complexion. Is this a studio pose, or did the artist want to paint the model resting between two sessions? With his hands on his knees and his face turned slightly into the shade, the model seems to be taking a break rather than posing.
The painting is of high quality and painted with an economy of means that proves that sometimes you have to buy a work for its beauty and not for the name of the artist. For Lemaistre, who is very little known, is best remembered for his illustrations and not at all for his paintings, of which there are so few examples that a search for "Alexis Lemaistre" in the pop.culture.gouv.fr database yields no results, and the same search in the RMN database produces just four illustrations.
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- 2. Domingos Antonio de Sequeira (1768-1837)
Study of an Elderly Woman at Prayer, c. 1828
Oil on canvas - 34 x 22 cm
Paris, Fondation Custodia
Photo: Galerie Mendes - See the image in its page
The second painting is an oil on canvas by Domingos António de Sequeira (ill. 2), one of the greatest Portuguese neoclassical painters whose works - sometimes also close to Romanticism - are extremely rare outside that country. In France, thanks to a gift from Jean-Pierre and Annie Changeux in 1979, the Louvre is able to display a sketch by his hand, as well as three drawings, two of which were purchased some fifteen years ago (see the news item of 9/7/10), while the Musée Louis-Philippe at the Château d’Eu holds a very large canvas, The Miracle of Ourique, which was part of the collection of the Brazilian emperor Ferdinando I who brought it to France during his exile. In the United States, we have only managed to find one drawing in the Metropolitan Museum, and the English collections, according to the Artuk database, only contain two portraits, one in Oxford and the other in Brodick Castle.
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- 3. Domingos Antonio de Sequeira (1768-1837)
Sitting Old Man: Portrait of the Poet Luís Vaz de Camões
Black chalk and white chalk - 13.9 x 13.2 cm
Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga
Photo: Christie’s - See the image in its page
It should be noted that the painter came to France for two years and presented a large painting, The Death of Camões, considered to be his most important work, at the Salon of 1824. A preparatory drawing for a figure in this painting, which was sold at Christie’s Paris on 7 October 2019, was acquired by the Museum Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon and was the subject of an exhibition there. We reproduce it here (ill. 3) because we did not mention it at the time.
Although this Death of Camões is now lost, it is quite possible, as Philippe Mendes pointed out to us and contrary to what we read in the Christie’s notice, that the painting is still kept in France. Offered by Sequeira to Ferdinando I, it left for Brazil but was, if we are to believe a contemporary account (see this site), brought back to France by the Prince of Joinville, who had married the emperor’s daughter, who had inherited it. We reproduce here (ill. 4) a preparatory drawing of the entire composition kept in the Lisbon museum, which gives a better idea of this painting, which has yet to be found.
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- 4. Domingos Antonio de Sequeira (1768-1837)
The Death of Camões
Black chalk and white chalk
Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga
Photo: Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga - See the image in its page
The Fondation Custodia’s acquisition is therefore all the more interesting, concerning an artist who is still little known outside his own country (as indeed is much of Portuguese painting). This is a study of an old woman at prayer, in which only her head and hands are represented, painted with great realism. Although no direct link with a known painting has been found, it dates from his last stay in Rome, where he settled in 1826 before dying there in 1837, and is probably contemporary with four large religious paintings, one of which, The Adoration of the Magi, recently entered the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (see news item of 2/5/16). He prepared these canvases, particularly the latter, with the help of numerous studies of heads modelled on Roman peasants, a widespread practice among painters in the Eternal City at the time.