Talabardon & Gautier sales at Ader

All the versions of this article: English , français

19/3/23 - Art Market - Paris - In a first article, we announced that we would review the Talabardon & Gautier sale organised by SVV Ader. The sale will finally take place in two sessions on Tuesday 21 and Thursday 23 March. The works in the first auction, mainly paintings and oils on paper, are currently on display at the Hôtel Drouot, while the drawings will be shown on Wednesday 22 March.


1. Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688)
Diogenes Looking for a Man
Oil on canvas - 110 x 84.5 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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We will only be able to quote and reproduce here a few of the many works that will come under fire at auction, and we hope that museums - regular clients of the gallery - will be able to make some purchases. We would like this to be the case, for example, for Joachim von Sandoz’s Diogenes seeking a man (ill. 1) by Joachim von Sandrart, firstly because it is a beautiful painting that was admired by Rubens (Sandrart himself tells this anecdote), and secondly because the artist, whose Teutsche Akademie, the first book on the history of art in the German language, which followed in Vasari’s footsteps almost a century earlier in Italy, is rare in French collections [1], and is notably absent from the Louvre.


2. Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714-1789)
The Apotheosis of Psyche
Oil on canvas - 57,6 x 65,2 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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Among the few old paintings (the nineteenth century is much more abundant), besides the painting by Michael Sweerts and the Jacopo Ligozzi that we had already reproduced, we can also point out two delightful sketches by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, including that of a ceiling for the Palais-Royal (ill. 2), a decoration that has now totally disappeared, and two other canvases by the same artist, much larger and in a more realistic mode, depicting a Savoyard man and woman.


3. François Gérard (1770-1837)
A Bay Horse, c. 1817
Oil and charcoal on canvas - 80.6 x 64.6 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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4. Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856)
The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1856
Oil on canvas - 65 x 54,3 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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In recent years, we have often talked about the gallery’s stands at the Salon du Dessin, Fine Arts Paris (formerly Paris Tableau) and Tefaf. Here and there we recognise some of the works that were presented there and which did not find a buyer. We reproduce here one of the most beautiful, which we had already mentioned in an edition of Tefaf New York, the study of a bay horse by François Gérard (ill. 3) in preparation for The Entry of Henri IV into Paris, which is kept at the Château de Versailles. We had also recently shown two spandrels for the Pantheon (here and there). We thought we had already illustrated Théodore Chassériau’s The Adoration of the Shepherds, a superb composition whose pendant is in the Petit Palais in Paris, but it seems we did not. This is repaired (ill. 4).


5. Simon Denis (1755-1813)
Vesuvius in Eruption, 1804
Oil on paper mounted on cardboard - 46 x 61 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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Amongst the numerous Italian landscapes, one of the gallery’s specialities, from which we could have made a wider choice, we shall retain a view of Vesuvius by the Flemish painter Simon Denis (ill. 5), and we shall end this session with a sculpture, by Prosper d’Épinay (ill. 6), a very original artist active under the Second Empire and adept at polychrome sculpture, of which this renaissance-inspired bust is a very fine example.


6. Prosper d’Épinay (1836-1914)
Françoise de la Rochefoucauld
Polychrome terracotta -
60.3 x 39.5 x 27.4 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 21 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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7. Étienne-Charles Leguay (1762-1846)
Young Woman Reading
Black chalk, white chalk, red chalk -
42 x 29.2 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 23 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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The drawings which were to be displayed two days later, along with other sculptures including the Bichat by David d’Angers already mentioned, are also rich in remarkable sheets, of which we shall retain here that of a little-known painter of the 18th century, Étienne-Charles Leguay, a Young Woman Reading (ill. 7), in three pencils, as well as a drawing by Louis-Léopold Boilly, a charming scene of a young girl carrying her little brother on her shoulders (ill. 8), preparatory to a painting entitled The Little Sister.


8. Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845)
A young girl carrying her brother on her shoulders in a garden, c. 1797-1799
Black chalk and white gouache highlights
white gouache - 47.3 x 33.9 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 23 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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9. Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
The Armchair, c. 1848-1860
Watercolour gouache, black pencil -
35.5 x 22.8 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 23 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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Some of the great names of the second half of the 19th century are also present with remarkable works: from Paul Gauguin we had already reported a major sheet, Be Symbolist, Portrait of Jean Moréas, and from Edgar Degas (ill. 9), in addition to a copy of The Dying Slave, we shall reproduce a study of an armchair, in watercolour, for the painting The Bellelli Family in the Musée d’Orsay.


VIVEZ: The Banquet; MOUREZ: The Tomb
Brush and ink wash on three pine boards - 28.4 x 82.5 cm
Ader sale, Drouot, 23 March 2023
Photo: SVV Ader
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And we will finish with Victor Hugo and two drawings (ill. 10) - which we mentioned without reproducing them in our article on Tefaf 2015 - in pen on ink wash on fir boards. The kind of unusual work one always expects to see on the Talabardon & Gautier stand.

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