24/4/23 - Fundraising campaign - Langres, Maison des Lumières-Denis Diderot - Very active in the field of acquisitions as our series of recently published articles demonstrates, the Langres museums deserve to be encouraged. This is the first reason why the fundraising campaign they launched a few days ago to enrich the Maison des Lumières with a sketch from the workshop of Gabriel-François Doyen (ill. 1) for his best-known painting, The Miracle of The Fervent from the church of Saint-Roch in Paris, (ill. 2) should be encouraged. The second reason is the intrinsic quality of this work, which we spotted and illustrated in our review of the recent Fine Arts Paris and La Biennale fair (see article), since renamed FAB Paris, when it was on the stand of Jacques Leegenhoek.
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- 1. Atelier de Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on canvas - 39 x 23.5 cm
Galerie Jacques Leegenhoek
Photo : Galerie Jacques Leegenhoek - See the image in its page
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- 2. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent, 1767
Oil on canvas - 665 x 393 cm
Paris, église Saint-Roch
Photo : Wikimedia (public domain) - See the image in its page
The genesis of the large painting is particularly complex to analyse because of the various sketches that have been preserved, some of which are considered to be in the painter’s hand, and others rather as studio works. The latter, presented as autograph at Fine Arts, is probably, according to the museum and the artist’s specialist who is due to publish the monograph soon with Arthena, a sketch by one of the studio’s good pupils. For him, only the painted sketches preserved in the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne (ill. 3) and in the Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai (ill. 4) were painted by Doyen himself.
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- 3. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of the Fervent
Oil on canvas - 100 x 61 cm
Bayonne, Musée Bonnat
Photo : Musée Bonnat - See the image in its page
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- 4. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on canvas - 108 x 65 cm
Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse
Photo : Musée de la Chartreuse - See the image in its page
In any case, as the Langres curator explains, "the interest of this sketch, apart from illustrating the final work as a whole, is that it bears witness to the workshop practice of using the master’s autograph sketches as training aids". We reproduce here, in addition to the two sketches already mentioned and the one that Langres wants to acquire, the two (ill. 5 and 6) kept in the Louvre Museum (one, in oil on paper, is in the Department of Graphic Arts), as well as those in the Carnavalet Museum (ill. 7) and in the Tessé Museum in Le Mans (ill. 8). We will give them all to Doyen here in the legend, even if some of them are probably from his workshop (the Le Mans version is reputed to be a copy by a certain "Boulanger"). We shall see more clearly, it is to be hoped, when the monograph comes out (let us also mention among the drawings the one acquired by the Ensba about fifteen years ago - see the news item of 13 April 2008).
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- 5. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on paper - 32.7 x 20.5 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo : RMN-GP - See the image in its page
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- 6. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on canvas - 80 x 50 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo : RMN-GP/A. Didierjean - See the image in its page
This sketch, in any case, has a rightful place in the Maison des Lumières devoted to Denis Diderot, in that it illustrates his criticism of the final painting of Saint-Roch, which is often contrasted with that of Vien in the other arm of the transept Saint Denis preaching the faith in France. A representative of a Baroque style influenced by Rubens (he travelled to Flanders before painting this large canvas), Doyen was one of the last artists to paint in this manner, which was soon replaced by the neoclassical style of which Vien was an early follower. Although Doyen’s painting is therefore rather ’backward’ compared to Vien’s, the fact remains that the former’s work is much more attractive than the latter’s, and that it later served as a model for the Romantics. Even if he criticised several aspects of it, Diderot could not but underline certain obvious qualities: "it is beautiful and very beautiful; it is warm, it is full of imagination and verve; there is drawing, expression, movement, lots and lots of colour, and it produces a great effect".
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- 7. Gabriel-François Doyen (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on canvas - 109 x 68 cm
Paris, Musée Carnavalet
Photo : Paris Musées (domaine public) - See the image in its page
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- 8. Gabriel-François Doyen ? (1726-1806)
The Miracle of The Fervent
Oil on canvas - 48 x 38 cm
Le Mans, Musée Tessé
Photo : Musée Tessé - See the image in its page
The dramatic scene shown by Doyen takes place in 1129 in the Cambrai region. As the libretto of the Salon states [1]: the celestial fire "fell upon the city of Paris and, devouring the entrails of almost all its inhabitants, caused them to experience the most cruel death". The "celestial fire" was none other than the ergot disease of rye, ergotism, caused by a fungus that parasitizes cereals and leads to convulsions and nervous system disorders that can lead to death. Doyen shows the intervention of Saint Genevieve to stop the epidemic.
The sketch is offered at a very reasonable price (no doubt because of the uncertainty of its attribution), i.e. 17 000 €, of which the town will pay 4 000, leaving the fundraising campaign to raise the remaining 13 000 €. It is possible to make a donation - tax deductible for french tax-payers - from this page.