XII - Christmas Catalogue - Marty de Cambiaire

The present drawing was initially given to Sergel on the basis of the old inscription
possibly by a French hand on the recto and of the inscription on the verso by a
Swedish, or at least Scandinavian, hand (the spelling of Sergel’s name is not French).
Ulf Cederlöf then gave it to the painter and decorator Louis Masreliez. Both Sergel
and Masreliez studied with the French sculpture Pierre-Hubert Larchevêque, active in
Sweden in 1755-1768.
The art historian noticed the similarity of the present drawing with several Larchevêque’s
sheets, which is also the case of numerous drawings of Masreliez’s youth. It should
be mentioned that the inscription Johan Tobias Sergel, with underlining, was made
by the same hand that appears on two sheets in the Stockholm museum (under the
same inventory number 30.780 :2). R. Josephson had attributed these two sheets to
Larchevêque’s early period, however, Per Bjurström suggested they may have been
executed by the young Sergel.
We shall remark the exaggerated neck, which forms a shape similar to a tube with
a perfectly oval, nearly egg-shaped face resting on it. This minor blunder can be
found in many of the young Sergel’s drawings, notably in a Caryatid formerly in the
villa Negroni, Rome (Stockholm Nationalmuseum), and a black chalk Bacchanalia
(Rödkrtia, Nationalmuseum).
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Catalogue de Noël