Neal Auction 2012

W denotes the lot is illustrated at www.nealauction.com 15 34. French School, 18th c ., “Male Nude Dragging a Fallen Figure by the Feet”, red chalk or sanguine crayon on cream- colored paper, fully watermarked and countermarked with untranslated French maker’s marks (crowned shield bearing flower, and 4-line phrase FIN DE / M...IO &[?] ANNOT / D ANNONA / [?]...) at 90º to central axis, unsigned, but inscribed en verso in sepia ink in a late 18th or early 19th c. hand, “tradling d’après Lertorupe”, 19 1/2 x 14 1/4 in. $800/1200 Provenance: James R. Lamantia Jr., New Orleans and New York. Note: These two figures are involved in a studio pose during a life-class or “academy,” a name which has been applied to the entire genre of life studies made directly from models. The fine, regular, and unblemished paper (bearing only tiny punctures for suspension), as well as the classic sanguine medium, clearly demonstrate the origin of this sheet in the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture at Paris (or, though less plausibly because of the paper, at the Académie Française in Rome). Red chalk or crayon had been the favored medium of life-class studies in both French academies at least since the time of the famous sculptor Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762), whose more masterly style this drawing somewhat reflects. Bouchardon was a pensionnaire of the French Academy in Rome from 1723 to 1733, where he executed a very large series of red chalk drawings after antique sculptures, and many sculptural commissions for local as well as traveling English and German clients. Back in Paris Bouchardon was elected a member of the Académie Royale (where he became a professor in 1747), and also of that of Belles-Lettres et Inscriptions, where from 1736 he made very many red chalk drawings for the Royal Mint. One of his most typical “academy” drawings, of about 1750—and one whose pose is most comparable to the present sheet—is in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (inv. no. 1969.41): it well exemplifies his clearly defined contours and long strokes of regular shading, both elements of which are more tentatively emulated here. References: Colin Harrison, “Edme Bouchardon,” Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., London, 1996, 34 vols., vol. 4, pp. 508-511; Alfred Moir, European Drawings in the Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, 1976, pp. 20-21. 34