A drawing by Gibelin preempted by the Musée des Arts décoratifs

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2/3/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs - As we mentioned in the preamble to the series of news items we devoted to recent acquisitions by the Musée des Arts décoratifs de Paris (see the news items of 3/12/22, 9/12/22 and 16/12/22), the latter preempted on November 24 at Millon a rare drawing by Esprit-Antoine Gibelin (ill.) after it was sold for 5,000 euros at the hammer.


1. Esprit-Antoine Gibelin (1739-1813)
Allegorical Figure of Fashion, 1780
Black chalk, gray wash and watercolor highlights
30.5 x 20 cm
Paris, Museum of Decorative Arts
Photo: Millon
See the image in its page

Signed and dated "Gibelin in 1780", the drawing bears a title at lower left, "La Mode, figure allégorique". The autograph inscription specifies that this allegory is "invented and drawn" by the artist. As Bénédicte Gady, curator in charge of the Department of Graphic Arts at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, points out in her detailed description of the work [1]. If the term fashion as we understand it today dates back to the fifteenth century, the allegorical representation of Fashion does not appear in the iconographic repertoires of the classical age, such as the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa or its French adaptation by Jean Baudoin. So Esprit-Antoine Gibelin composed his allegory from other existing canons and allegorical attributes. A young winged woman leaning on the tip of one foot on a globe, his figure of Fashion takes up the representation of Fortune. Her precarious balance suggests the vagaries of fashion while the scepter symbolizes her authority. On the other hand, unlike Fortune, she does not hold a large drape in which the wind rushes over her head, but she lifts it with her right hand to reveal, placed on a hoop surrounding her pelvis, a round of dolls. Enhanced with light washes of pink, blue and pale yellow watercolor, they wear the high hairstyles and large hats of Marie-Antoinette’s time.

Fashion dolls and not toy dolls, these figurines were intended to spread the fashions of Paris throughout the world. In the 18th century, they were in full expansion before being preferred, from the end of the century, to the diffusion of engravings through the fashion newspapers. A contemporary description of these figurines is known, delivered by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in the first volumes of his exhaustive Tableau de Paris in 1781: "It is from Paris that the profound inventors in this genre give laws to the universe. The famous doll, the precious mannequin, dressed with the most new fashions, finally the inspiring prototype goes from Paris to London every month, and from there spreads these graces throughout Europe. It goes to the north and to the south: it penetrates Constantinople and Saint Petersburg; and the fold that a French hand has given, is repeated in all nations, humble observers of the taste of the rue Saint-Honoré! I knew a foreigner who did not want to believe in the doll of the rue Saint-Honoré that one regularly sends to the North to carry the model of the new hairstyle, while the second volume of this same doll goes to the depths of Italy and from there makes itself known until the interior of the seraglio. I led him, this incredulous, in the famous store, and he saw with his eyes, and he touched, and, while touching, he seemed to doubt again; all that seemed to him really incredible ".

This drawing, with its highly original iconography, is of interest to various areas of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ collections, whether graphic arts, fashion, toys or historical collections. Until now, the museum only had a draft of Esprit-Antoine Gibelin’s frontispiece for a work by Father Gabriel Fabricy dedicated to the Comte de Caylus, entitled Recherches sur l’époque de l’équitation et de l’usage des chars équestres chez les Anciens (Research on the era of horseback riding and the use of horse-drawn carriages among the ancients), decorated with his engravings. This new acquisition also provides the French public collections with a new work by an artist who is little represented there. Among these are Priestesses Feeding Apollo’s Horses from the Louvre Museum, signed and dated 1770, Marie-Antoinette Handing Over the Dauphin to France from the Musée national du château de Versailles, the Bacchanal from the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and the Scene of an Offering to Priape from the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

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