10/3/23 - Acquisition - Saint-Cloud, Musée du Grand Siècle - It had been the subject of a research announcement by the Château de Versailles on La Tribune de l’Art in 2017 (see announcement) ahead of the exhibition "Jean Cotelle (1646-1708), gardens and gods" then in preparation. Unlocated since the 2000s, the artist’s gouache on vellum depicting Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well had then fortunately reappeared, which moreover was endowed with its precious original gilded wooden frame. Kept in private hands, it was presented at the Grand Trianon from 12 June to 16 September 2018 among the panel of more than a hundred works by the artist gathered for the first retrospective to be devoted to him. It now joins the Musée du Grand Siècle which, pursuing a dynamic acquisition policy (see articles), has acquired it from the Galerie Talabardon & Gautier.
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- John II Cotelle, called the Younger (1646-1708)
Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well
Gouache on vellum stretched on panel - 19.5 x 32 cm
Saint-Cloud, Musée du Grand Siècle
Photo: Galerie Talabardon et Gautier - See the image in its page
As the exhibition catalogue entry suggests, this miniature may have been exhibited at the 1704 Salon, where it would correspond to one of the two landscapes presented by Jean Cotelle: "One of Rebecca receiving jewels from Abraham’s servant." The gouache subsequently lost its attribution and was, until its rediscovery, given to Joseph II Werner, called the Younger, a brilliant painter and miniaturist of Swiss origin who worked for many European royal and princely courts and in particular for Louis XIV at Versailles from 1662 to 1667. Thus, as Bertrand Talabardon and Bertrand Gautier point out in their detailed notice, if Werner and Cotelle were both talented miniaturists, the style of the rediscovered gouache leaves no doubt as to its attribution. The gallery owners cite several characteristic elements in this respect, the liveliness of the colouring, particularly the blues, the female physiognomies, the drapery and the way the foliage and vegetation in the foreground are treated. Mention is also made of the representation of the particularly hostile-looking camels, which is identical to a contemporary anonymous engraving of the same subject, drawn by Cotelle for a collection of biblical scenes published by Mariette. The Versailles catalogue adds that the technique, the small format and the brilliance of the blues are also reminiscent of the artist’s known fan designs.
The miniature is furthermore compared with two other works, the famous Eliezer and Rebekah by Nicolas Poussin in the Louvre, painted in 1648 for the banker Jean Pointel before being acquired by the Duke of Richelieu and then by Louis XIV in 1665, and the small Eliezer and Rebekah on copper by his brother-in-law Nicolas Loir in the Musée Magnin in Dijon. The frieze composition, the architectural elements and certain poses of the female characters make explicit reference to the first one, while the reduced number of camels represented - three out of the ten mentioned in Genesis - and the figure of Eliezer kneeling in the central part at the side of the chest echo the second one.
The place of this ambitious miniature on vellum by Jean Cotelle in the Musée du Grand Siècle is all the more relevant since the painter, before the most important commission of his career, the decoration of the Grand Trianon gallery in Versailles to which he gave his name - twenty-one paintings produced between 1687 and 1693 -, worked at the Château de Saint-Cloud. There, at the request of one of his main patrons, the brother of King Philippe d’Orléans, known as "Monsieur", he produced paintings for the Cabinet des Bijoux on the story of Venus and Aeneas, which have now disappeared.