2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

Provenance: Reginald Vaile, Esq.; Christie's, London,
23 May 1903, lot 37 (£2,625 to Agnew's); Charles
Fairfax Murray; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 15 June
1914, lot 18; Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Williams,
Cincinnati and thence by descent until 2005.
Literature: G. Wildenstein, Lancret, Paris, 1924,
p. 81, no. 145, fig. 207.
Exhibited: London, Guildhall Art Gallery, Catalogue
of the Exhibition of a Selection of Works by French and
English Painters of the Eighteenth Century, 1902, p. 40,
no. 35; Glasgow, 1902; San Francisco, The California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, Exhibition of French
Painting, from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day,
1934, p. 38, no. 35.
This delightful duet by Nicolas Lancret had been lost
to public view for the better part of a century. It was
recorded (under cat. 145, fig. 207) among paintings
he had not seen by Georges Wildenstein in his 1924
catalogue raisonné of this artist. 1
The composition is beautifully arranged, a classic fête
galante. The five elegant figures are arranged with
Lancret's trademark grasp of composition - the five
figures rise and fall in a graceful rhythm across the
front plane, with the main female dancer silhouetted
against the sky, the lovers' graceful curve carving out
the right side and the hurdy-gurdy player carefully
framed by the menuet. The inscription on the back is
in a nineteenth-century hand, but must be based on
an earlier inscription, as the information therein seems
entirely correct. That inscription dates this work to
1732. The 1730s was a decade of great maturity in
Lancret's work. The composition of Le Menuet, with
the reduced number of figures pushed forward to the
picture plane and all large within the space of the
painting, is typical of this period. This painting invites
comparison with other fine examples of the artist's
work of this time, such as Les Amours de Bocage (Alte
Pinakothek, Munich) or Le Jeu de Quilles (owned by
Frederick the Great, one of Lancret's most ardent
admirers, and today in Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin).
The subject, a beautiful dance, is characteristic of
Lancret at his best. The dancing girl bears close
17
Nicolas Lancret
(Paris 1690 – 1743 Paris)
Le Menuet
Inscribed by a nineteenth century hand on the reverse: ‘Danse Champêtrê… peint par m’ Lancret peintre du roy en 1732
la tête du jour et de l’academie de vielle est le portrait de M’Mestais avocat au parlement.’
Oil on canvas
29 x 34 1 /4 in. (73.7 x 87 cm.)
56
resemblance to the two seminal portraits of dancers
made by Lancret just a few years prior, those of
La Camargo (for example the elaborate version in the
National Gallery, Washington D.C., and the simpler
version in The Wallace Collection, London) and Mlle
Sallé (Schloss Rheinsburg). She, like they, testify to the
importance of the female dancer in Lancret's work,
and, indeed, of dance at the time. She is a fine example
of the use of his favourite source material, the
seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century French print
tradition, especially the fashion plates and
theatre/dance role images. Lancret drew from that well
repeatedly, and this dancer with castagnets is based
firmly on images such as Mlle. Du Fort dansant à
l'Opera, published by André Trouvain in 1702. The
dancing man is dressed in the ribbons of an actor, a
device often used by Lancret to create a tension
between the real world and the world of the stage in his
paintings.
One captivating aspect of the subject is the inclusion of
the portrait of an existing person among these fictional
creations. The initial head of the hurdy-gurdy player
has been painted over and replaced with a portrait, a
very distinct likeness. Lancret experimented with
placing portraits within fêtes throughout his career,
certainly inspired by the example of Watteau, who
included portraits of members of his circle in some of
his fêtes; the figure of Crispin, for example, to the far
right of Love in the French Theatre (Gemäldegalerie,
Berlin) is certainly a portrait, probably of the great
actor Paul Poisson. 2 Lancret's concept here is actually
closer to the Watteau work, the insertion of a true
likeness within a theme that is not itself a work of
portraiture. The idea must have come to Lancret late in
the conception of this work, as the portrait appears to
have been added over an existing head. One wonders
if the painting might have been intended as a gift to
the owner of that head, who is identified in the
inscription as one M. Mestais, designated by the
inscription on the back as an avocat au parlement.
Report by Mary Tavener Holmes, who confirms the likely
date of 1732.