26/6/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée du Louvre - We noticed the drawing in an article dedicated to gallery exhibitions last spring (see news item of 27/3/23). This was also the case for the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts, which bought this large sheet by André Lebrun from the Galerie Alexis Bordes.
A quick look at the museum’s collection database reveals that the Louvre previously held only three sheets by this sculptor, all of which were more decorative in nature, unlike this one, which is a history scene depicting Venus asking Vulcan for weapons for Aeneas.
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- 1. André Lebrun (1737-1811)
Venus Asking Vulcan for Aeneas, c. 1780
Pen and brown ink, brown wash over black stone lines - 44.5 x 64 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo : Alexis Bordes - See the image in its page
A pupil of Jean-Baptiste Pigalle [1]. In 1756, Lebrun was awarded the First Grand Prix for sculpture with Melchisedech Presenting Abraham with the Bread and Wine He Blessed (alas, now lost), and left for Italy and the Palazzo Mancini, seat of the Académie de France in Rome, only three years later. After his four-year stay, he remained in Rome, where he was admitted to the Academy of Saint Luke, and became director of the Scuola del Nudo, an institution created by Pope Benedict XIV. He created several sculptures, including busts of Pope Clement XIII.
In 1768, he worked for Stanislas II Auguste Poniatowski and moved to Warsaw. After another stay in Rome between 1772 and 1779, he was appointed first sculptor to the King of Poland. In 1803, after unsuccessful attempts to establish himself at the Russian court, which had taken possession of Poland, he moved to Vilnius, where he was appointed professor of sculpture and stone-cutting at the city’s university, and where he died in 1811.
Although Lebrun’s sculptures, scattered between Italy, Poland and Russia, are not well known in France [2], his graphic work is not rare and his style, which uses brown ink in a very painterly way, is recognisable: an utterly particular way of playing with the wash, making it cover the whole sheet in more or less dark tones, coupled with a very angular drawing. This drawing, like others comparable to it in both format and ambition, is probably not preparatory to a sculpture, which could only be a relief. It is probably more a work made for its own sake. Since the 19th century, it has been accompanied by another sheet, The Resurrection of Lazarus, certainly a fake pendant if we consider the very different subjects, one mythological, the other religious.